^"<\ 


'^o/^.cP'^ 


BOOK    330.D56E    c.  1 

DICKINSON    #    ECONOMIC    MOTIVES 


3  T1S3  00Dfl7t,7T  T 


HARVARD  ECONOMIC  STUDIES 


I.  The  English  Patents  of  Monopoly.  By  Wil- 
liam H.  Price.    8vo. 

II.  The  Lodging  House  Problem  in  Boston. 
By  Albert  B.  Wolfe.    8vo. 

III.  The  Stannaries:  A  Study  of  the  English 
Tin  Miner,    By  George  R.  Lewis.    8vo. 

IV.  Railroad  Reorganization.  By  Stuart  Dag- 
gett.   8vo. 

V.  Wool-Growing  and  the  Tariff.  By  Chester 
W.  Wright.     8vo. 

VI.  Public  Ownership  of  Telephones  on  the 
Continent  of  Europe.  By  Arthur  N.  Hol- 
combe.     8vo. 

VII.  The  History  of  the  British  Post  Office. 
By  J.  C.  Hemmeon.     8vo. 

VIII.  The  Cotton  Manufacturing  Industry  of 
the  United  States.  By  M.  T.  Copeland. 
8vo. 

IX.  The  History  of  the  Grain  Trade  in  France. 
By  Abbott  Payson  Usher.    8vo. 

X.  Corporate  Promotions  and  Reorganiza- 
tions.  By  A.  S.  Dewing.  8vo. 

XI.  The  Anthracite  Coal  Combination  in  the 
United  States.     By  Eliot  Jones.     8vo. 

XII.  Some  Aspects  of  the  Tariff  Question.  By 
F.  W.  Taussig.    8vo. 

XIII.  The  Evolution  of  the  English  Corn 
Market  from  the  Twelfth  to  the  Eighteenth 
Century.    By  N.  S.  B.  Gras.    8vo. 


XIV.  Social  Adaptation:  A  Study  in  the 
Development  of  the  Doctrine  of  Adapta- 
tion as  a  Theory  of  Social  Progress.  By 
L.  M.  Bristol.    8vo. 

XV.  The  Financial  History  of  Boston,  from 
May  1,  1822,  to  January  31,  igog.  By  C.  P. 
Huse.    8vo. 

XVI.  Essays  in  the  Earlier  History  of  Amer- 
ican Corporations.  By  J.  S.  Davis.  8vo. 
2  volumes. 

XVn.  The  State  Tax  Commission.  By  H.  L. 
Lutz.    8vo. 

XVIII.  The  Early  English  Customs  System. 
By  N.  S.  B.  Gras.     8vo. 

XIX.  Trade  and  Navigation  between  Spain 
and  the  Indies  in  the  time  of  the  Hapsburgs. 
By  C.  H.  Haring.     8vo. 

XX.  The  Italian  Emigration  of  Our  Times. 
By  R.  F.  Foerster.    8vo. 

XXI.  The  Mesta:  A  Study  in  Spanish  Eco- 
nomic History,  1273-1836.  By  Julius 
Klein.    8vo. 

XXII.  Argentine  International  Trade  under 
Inconvertible    Paper    Money:     1880-1900. 

By    J.  H.  Williams.     8vo. 

XXIII.  The  Organization  of  the  Boot  and 
Shoe  Industry  in  Massachusetts  before  1875. 
By  Blanche  E.  Hazard.     8vo. 

XXIV.  Economic    Motives. 
Dickinson.     8vo. 

XXV.  Monetary  Theory  before  Adam  Smith. 
By  Arthur  E.  Monroe.     8vo. 


By   Zenas    C. 


HARVARD  UNIVERSITY  PRESS 

CAMBRIDGE,  MASS.,  U.S.A. 


HARVARD  ECONOMIC  STUDIES 

PUBLISHED  UNDER  THE   DIRECTION  OF 
THE  DEPARTMENT  OF  ECONOMICS 

VOL.  XXIV 


LONDON :  HUMPHREY  MILFORD 

OXFORD  UNIVERSITY  PRESS 


U6 
ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

A  STUDY  IN  THE   PSYCHOLOGICAL  FOUNDATIONS 

OF  ECONOMIC  THEORY,  WITH  SOME 

REFERENCE  TO   OTHER   SOCIAL   SCIENCES 

BY 

ZENAS  CLARK  DICKINSON,  Ph.D. 

ASSISTANT  PROFESSOR  OF  ECONOMICS  IN  THE 
UNIVERSITY  OF  MINNESOTA 


AWARDED  THE  DAVID  A.  WELLS  PRIZE  FOR 
THE  YEAR  1919-20,  AND  PUBLISHED  FROM 
THE  INCOME  OF  THE  DAVID  A.  WELLS  FUND 


CAMBRIDGE 

HARVARD  UNIVERSITY  PRESS 
1924 


COPYRIGHT,   1922 
BY  HARVARD  UNIVERSITY  PRESS 

First  impression,  1922 
Second  impression,  1924 


PRINTED  AT  HARVARD  UNIVERSITY  PRESS 
CAMBRIDGE,  MASS.,  U.  S.  A. 


PREFACE 

The  following  essay  grew  out  of  a  doctoral  thesis  presented  at 
Harvard  University  in  1919,  and  it  was  submitted  in  the  Wells 
Prize  competition  in  1920. 

It  seems  impossible  to  find  a  title  that  accurately  and  briefly 
covers  the  field  of  the  inquiry.  This  field  may  be  called  the 
psychological  problems  and  postulates  of  economics,  which  are 
most  conspicuous,  of  course,  in  the  matter  relating  to  Wants, 
Self-interest,  Value,  Interest  and  Wages.  These  psychological 
questions  are  concerned,  I  believe,  not  only  with  seeking  the 
chains  of  causation  which  make  economic  behavior  what  it  is, 
and  what  it  might  be,  but  also  with  examining  the  effects  of 
such  activities  on  human  welfare.  In  other  words,  it  appears 
that  there  are  psychological  problems  involved  in  the  fullest 
investigation  of  Production  and  Economic  Welfare,  as  well  as 
of  Value  and  Distribution. 

The  main  purpose  of  this  essay  is  to  gather  up  whatever  ma- 
terial is  to  be  found  in  psychological  science  that  offers  help  in 
dealing  with  the  above  problems,  and  to  present  this  material 
briefly  in  a  manner  intelligible  to  the  economist  or  other  social 
scientist.  A  considerable  background  of  psychological  funda- 
mentals is  given  (in  Part  II),  the  relevancy  of  which  may  not  be 
apparent,  for  the  reason  that  the  psychological  vocabularies  now 
current  in  social  science  discussions  are  too  confused  to  admit 
of  clear  statements  unless  one's  own  presuppositions  are  made 
quite  explicit.  The  relevancy  of  the  historical  chapters  (in  Part 
I)  to  my  main  purpose  may  also  be  questioned,  and  perhaps  they 
are  over  lengthy.  But  discussions  of  our  topics  in  the  past  have 
clustered  largely  around  the  social-psychology  dogma  that 
economic  theory  suffers  from  false  assumptions  as  to  the  ''ration- 
ality" of  human  behavior  in  regard  to  wealth,  such  misappre- 
hensions being  traced  usually  to  the  Utilitarians;   and  since  my 


vi  PREFACE 

study  of  associationist  and  modern  psychology  convinced  me 
that  there  is  very  much  less  discrepancy  between  the  two  than 
the  above  dogma  assumes,  I  thought  it  worth  while  to  give  con- 
siderable space  to  the  matter. 

The  conclusion  emerges,  as  might  be  expected,  that  psy- 
chological problems  of  economics  are  at  present  to  be  attacked 
more  effectively  by  the  ordinary  methods  of  economic  science, 
which  consists  of  statistical  analysis  of  the  behavior-data  relevant 
to  the  case,  than  by  means  of  psychological  principles;  for  psy- 
chologists are  making  progress  in  understanding  other  types  of 
behavior  by  similar  statistical  analysis.  But  apparently  in  every 
field  of  discovery  the  collection  of  facts  will  be  the  more  enlight- 
ening, the  more  soHdly  grounded  the  collector  is  in  first  prin- 
ciples. I  think  economic  psychology  is  no  exception,  and  it  is 
my  hope  that  this  volume  will  contribute  something  to  the  wider 
understanding  of  the  needed  fundamentals. 

Grateful  acknowledgment  is  made  of  help  received  from 
scholars  at  Harvard,  especially  Professors  Taussig,  Carver,  and 
Bullock,  on  the  economic  side,  and  Professors  Holt  and  Perry  on 
the  psychological  side.  I  cannot  indicate  how  much  I  prize  Pro- 
fessor Taussig's  inspiration,  counsel  and  encouragement.  Among 
my  colleagues  at  the  University  of  Minnesota  I  must  thank 
Professors  R.  M.  Elliott,  Mabel  Fernald,  and  F.  B.  Garver,  not 
only  for  reading  the  manuscript  but  for  a  large  measure  of  sug- 
gestions and  encouragement. 

MiNNEAPous,  Minnesota 
Aprilj  1922. 


CONTENTS 

PART  I 
INTRODUCTION  AND  HISTORICAL  APPROACH 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.  Human  Nature  in  Economics 3 

II.   Common-Sense  Analysis  of  Motives 16 

III.  Associationist-Hedonism:   Aristotle,  Hobbes  ...  26 

IV.  The  Psychology  of  Adam  Smith 43 

V,  The  Utilitarian  Psychology:   Jeremy  Bentham     .  54 

VI.   Utilitarian  Psychology:  The  Two  Mills  and  Bain  .  67 

PART  II 
THE  PSYCHOLOGICAL  ANALYSIS  OF  MOTIVES 

VII.  The  Newer  Point  of  View  in  Psychology  ....  83 

VIII.   Instincts,  Aptitudes  and  Appetites,  in  General    .  92 

IX.  The  Human  Instincts  and  Aptitudes 109 

X.  Emotion,  Pleasure  and  Pain 131 

XL  The  Learning  Process 144 

XII.  Learning,  Reasoning  and  Rationality 163 

XIII.  How  May  New  Motives  be  Instilled? 196 

PART  III 

SOME  APPLICATIONS  OF  PSYCHOLOGY  TO  PROBLEMS  OF 
ECONOMIC  THEORY 

XIV.  The  Present  State  of  Economic  Psychology.    .    .  205 
XV.  Applications  to  Economic  Wants 207 

XVI.  Utility  and  Cost 229 

XVII.  Psychology  of  the  Valuation  Process 239 

XVIII.  Psychology  in  Saving 254 

XIX.  Work 270 

INDEX 297 


For  men  have  entered  into  a  desire  of  learning  and  knowl- 
edge, sometimes  upon  a  natural  curiosity  and  inquisitive 
appetite:  sometimes  to  entertain  their  minds  with  variety 
and  delight;  sometimes  for  ornament  and  reputation;  and 
sometimes  to  enable  them  to  victory  of  wit  and  contradic- 
tion; and  most  times  for  lucre  and  profession;  and  seldom 
sincerely  to  give  a  true  account  of  their  gift  of  reason ,  to  the 
benefit  and  use  of  men:  as  if  there  were  sought  in  knowledge 
a  couch  whereupon  to  rest  a  searching  and  restless  spirit;  or 
a  tarrasse,  for  a  wandering  and  variable  mind  to  walk  up 
and  down  with  a  fair  prospect;  or  a  tower  of  state,  for  a 
proud  mind  to  raise  itself  upon;  or  a  fort  or  commanding 
ground,  for  strife  and  contention;  or  a  shop,  for  profit  or 
sale;  and  not  a  rich  storehouse,  for  the  glory  of  the  Creator 
and  the  relief  of  man^s  estate. 

Bacon  :    Advancement  of  Learning,  Bk.  I. 


PART  I 

INTRODUCTION  AND  HISTORICAL 
APPROACH 


CHAPTER  I 

HUMAN  NATURE  IN  ECONOMICS 

Mental  and  Physical  Foundations 

The  object  of  this  essay  is  to  continue  and  bring  down  to  date 
the  old  discussion  of  the  constitution  of  human  nature.  While 
we  are  interested  primarily  in  that  part  of  the  discussion  which 
has  significance  for  economics,  yet  it  seems  possible  that  our 
analysis  may  be  helpful  to  a  wider  circle  than  just  the  economists. 
For  when  the  present  writer  set  himself  to  investigate  the  specifi- 
cally economic  motives,  he  found  so  little  agreement  on  the  fun- 
damentals of  social  psychology  involved  that  a  reexamination 
of  these  fundamentals  appeared  to  be  necessary,  and  such  a 
restatement  constitutes  the  greater  part  of  the  essay.  That  these 
foundations  are  of  considerable  importance  for  psychology, 
ethics,  and  social  science  and  art  generally  has  been  shown 
especially  in  the  last  decade,  by  the  enthusiastic  reception  ac- 
corded to  McDougall's  Social  Psychology. 

In  what  connections  are  questions  of  human  nature  important 
for  economics?  This  question  must  be  answered  at  the  outset, 
for  there  are  many  economists  who  believe  that  economics  has 
little  to  gain  from  psychological  importations.  And,  in  indicating 
where  psychological  assumptions  (whether  accurate  or  inac- 
curate) are  actually  employed  in  this  science,  we  can  incidentally 
suggest  some  of  the  other  social  problems  which  involve  exactly 
the  same  questions  of  human  nature. 

Logically  the  first  step  toward  explaining  the  economic  world  is 
to  explain  the  wants  which  broadly  determine  what  goods  shall  be 
produced.  There  are,  to  be  sure,  other  motives  in  production  too; 
the  want  of  poor  John  Jones  for  street-car  service  does  not  move 
the  productive  resources  nearly  so  much  as  does  rich  Tom 
Trout's  demand  for  transportation  by  limousine.  But  in  a  larger 
view  the  wants  of  consumers  for  moving-picture  amusement 


4  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

cause  men  and  money  to  turn  out  celluloid  and  studios,  and  other 
wants  give  rise  to  other  industries.  Hence  many  economic  writers 
begin  their  treatises  with  this  topic  of  Wants.  It  is  closely  related 
to  the  subject  of  Consumption  of  Wealth;  the  outstanding  prob- 
lem of  both  being  to  find  why  people  want  just  what  they  do 
today  —  Teddy  bears,  or  admission  to  professional  baseball 
games,  for  example  —  and  turn  up  their  noses  at  things  they 
wanted  a  year  or  a  century  ago,  —  say  babies'  cradles  or  detach- 
able cuffs.  Such  an  inquiry  into  the  nature  and  natural  history  of 
economic  wants  soon  pushes  the  student  back  to  the  psycho- 
logical entities  of  instincts,  ideas,  association  or  what  not,  — 
questions  of  human  nature. 

Let  us  recognize  at  once  that  an  economic  treatment  of  con- 
sumption includes  much  matter  which  is  in  no  wise  psychological, 
for  it  goes  on  to  show  what  are  the  long-run  effects  of  wants  (for 
necessities,  luxuries  and  so  forth)  on  the  people  who  are  actuated 
by  them.  It  is  one  thing  to  show  why  people  wish  to  act  so  and  so, 
—  to  save  part  of  their  income,  for  example,  or  to  live  it  all  up 
as  they  go.  It  is  another  thing,  and  quite  independent  of  their 
wishes,  to  show  what  happens  to  them  as  a  result  of  their  acts,  in 
each  case.  This  is  one  illustration  of  the  general  truth  that  the 
foundations  of  economics  are  only  partially  in  human  nature; 
they  are  also  laid  in  the  external  world  which  goes  its  way 
whether  we  like  it  or  not.^ 

It  is  materials  of  the  latter  nature  which  are  chiefly  used  in  the 
traditional  sections  on  Production  and  Exchange.  As  John  Stuart 
Mill  put  it  (perhaps  too  strongly) ,  the  economic  principles  in  these 
divisions  "have  nothing  optional  about  them,"  they  are  but 
elaborations  of  the  data  of  physics,  geology  and  biology.  The 
advantages  of  division  of  labor,  for  instance,  and  of  capital  equip- 
ment (tools  and  machinery) ;  the  '  diminishing  returns  '  of  agri- 

1  '  Psychological '  and  '  physical '  causes  are  presumably  not  ultimately  dif- 
ferent in  nature.  The  qualification  psychological  as  herein  used  means  only  that  a 
human  reaction  or  mental  act  is  directly  involved.  It  is  doubtless  true  that  one's 
motives,  beUefs,  tendencies  or  whatever  the  human  springs  of  action  be  caUed, 
receive  all  their  qualities  ultimately  from  physical  nature,  partly  by  way  of  the 
molding  effect  of  his  environment  (physical  and  social)  and  partly  by  way  of  natural 
selection  or  similar  influences  on  his  ancestors. 


HUMAN  NATURE  IN  ECONOMICS  5 

cultural  produce  per  unit  of  capital  and  labor,  as  soil  is  more 
intensively  cultivated;  the  economies  of  large-scale  production 
through  diminishing  quota  of  overhead  expense  to  the  unit  of  out- 
put C  increasing  returns  ') ;  the  dependence  of  prices  on  quantity 
of  money;  —  these  are  among  the  more  important  orthodox  eco- 
nomic laws  which  apparently  can  be  little  affected  by  changes  in 
the  winds  of  psychological  doctrine. 

Nevertheless  there  are  psychological  problems  even  in  these 
sections.  Adam  Smith  raised  one  when  he  attempted  to  explain 
how  division  of  labor  had  originally  come  about. 

This  division  of  labour,  from  which  so  many  advantages  are  derived,  is  not 
originally  the  effect  of  any  human  wisdom,  which  foresees  and  intends  that 
general  opulence  to  which  it  gives  occasion.  It  is  the  necessary,  though  very 
slow  and  gradual  consequence  of  a  certain  propensity  in  human  nature  which 
has  in  view  no  such  extensive  utility;  the  propensity  to  truck,  barter,  and 
exchange  one  thing  for  another."^ 

Of  course  Smith  was  a  psychologist  — •  an  uncommonly  good  one 
—  and  it  might  be  said  that  he  dragged  these  observations  into  his 
economics  unnecessarily.  What  do  we  care  how  it  all  came  about? 
Possibly  nothing;  but  on  the  solution  of  a  closely  related  problem 
may  hang  life  or  death,  comfort  or  misery,  for  millions  of  people  in 
the  future.  This  problem  is  the  part  played  by  human  nature  in 
improvements  of  the  arts,  —  in  mechanical  or  other  invention. 
We  all  talk  glibly  of  the  wonderful  '  labor-saving  machinery  ' 
which  is  still  to  come  forth,  but  how  can  we  best  assure  that  it  will 
come?  Does  '  capitalism,'  independent  enterprise,  patent  monop- 
oly, public  or  private  research  agencies,  or  some  other  means,  best 
promote  such  advances?  Economics  can  assist  in  answering 
questions  like  these  only  in  proportion  to  its  achievement  of  an 
increasingly  accurate  explanation  of  production,  including  the 
motives  of  inventors  and  other  producers.^ 

Another  portentous  psychological  issue  raised  in  the  study  of 
production  is  this:  What  effect  has  the  minute  subdivision  of 
tasks  on  the  mental  health  and  happiness  of  the  humble  worker? 
Many  observers  think,  as  Mill  did  at  one  time,  that  the  monotony 

'  Wealth  of  Nations  (1776),  Book  I,  ch.  ii. 

2  Cf.  L.  Wolman,  "The  Theory  of  Production,"  Am.  Ec.  Rev.  Supplement  for 
March,  1921. 


6  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

and  fatigue  attributable  to  machinery  offsets  its  advantage  in 
productiveness.  Again  the  economist  may  say  that  this  is  a 
sociological  or  ethical  or  medical  question,  and  so  is  beyond  his 
province.  Undoubtedly  many  of  the  special  investigations  neces- 
sary for  answering  the  question  are  beyond  his  technique,  but 
even  if  he  refrains  entirely  from  pronouncements  on  economic 
welfare  (few  economists  do  so  refrain) ,  such  effects  on  the  worker 
should  be  considered  so  far  as  they  reduce  his  economic  pro- 
ductivity. 

Value  is  the  central  problem  of  economics.  Production  follows 
values,  even  if  these  are  expressed  by  ballots  instead  of  by  pur- 
chases; and  Distribution  into  Rent,  Interest,  Wages  and  Profits  is 
merely  a  matter  of  the  value  of  land,  loans  and  kinds  of  labor. 
As  Mill  saw,  psychological  and  social  factors  are  especially  im- 
portant in  this  division.  The  individual's  evaluation  of  alter- 
native purchases  seems  preeminently  a  mental  act,  a  matter  of 
choosing  or  deciding  how  many  apples  or  doughnuts  he  wants  just 
as  much  as  he  wants  a  dime,  —  how  many  A  are  just  as  valuable 
to  him  as  B.  This  individual  subjective  process  is  studied  by 
economists  principally  for  the  purpose  of  explaining  the  fluc- 
tuations of  market  exchange  values,  that  is,  to  ascertain  as 
completely  as  possible  why  a  bushel  of  wheat,  say,  becomes  ex- 
changeable for  two  chickens  now,  whereas  a  year  ago  it  would 
buy  but  one. 

The  older  economists  —  Ricardo  conspicuously  —  maintained 
a  labor  theory  of  value,  to  the  effect  that  things  exchange,  on  the 
whole,  in  proportion  to  the  labor-times  required  in  their  produc- 
tion. This  theory  proved  so  inexact  as  to  be  nearly  worthless 
except  to  the  Socialists  for  propaganda;  and  the  supplementary 
marginal  utility  theory  of  Gossen,  Menger  and  Jevons  (1871)  is 
one  of  the  great  triumphs  of  economic  science.  The  latter  states 
that  goods  are  not  valued  because  they  have  cost  labor,  —  for 
example,  land  and  many  other  objects  which  are  gifts  of  nature 
are  valuable,  simply  because  they  are  so  scarce  as  not  to  satisfy  all 
wants  for  them;  but  labor  is  valuable  because  of  the  goods  it  is  the 
means  toward  getting.  The  key  to  value,  then,  is  in  wants  and  in 
the  way  that  any  one  of  them  becomes  progressively  '  saturated  ' 


HUMAN  NATURE  IN  ECONOMICS  7 

as  successive  units  of  the  same  good  are  possessed  (diminishing 
utility).  We  are  not  attempting  a  discourse  on  value  here,  our 
point  is  that  economic  discussions  of  value  have  become  much 
occupied  with  this  psychology  of  wants  and  of  choice ;  so  much  so 
that  a  large  group  of  economists  who  specialize  on  the  subject  of 
value  are  called  the  "Psychological  School." 

Beyond  this  branch  of  the  general  theory  of  value,  the  lore  of 
motives  looms  large  in  discussions  of  the  special  values  of  capital 
and  labor;  or  let  us  rather  say  in  respect  to  matters  of  public 
policy  based  on  these  branches  of  the  theory.  The  economic  dis- 
tinction between  interest  and  rent  is  chiefly  a  matter  of  motives, 
in  that  the  supply  of  capital  (savings  out  of  which  new  buildings, 
machinery,  etc.,  can  be  provided)  appears  to  be  kept  up  only  on 
condition  that  interest  is  paid  to  savers;  whereas  the  amount  of 
land  is  practically  a  fixed  quantity  regardless  of  whether  private 
property  is  permitted  in  it  and  rent  paid  to  the  owners.  It  seems 
even  clearer  that  labor  will  not  be  forthcoming  unless  wages  are  to 
be  paid  for  it,  and  that  if  the  employer  is  to  take  the  chief  risks  of 
loss  in  carrying  on  production,  he  must  be  induced  to  do  so  by 
prospects  of  possible  profits. 

But  of  late  years  it  has  become  orthodox  economic  doctrine 
that  there  are  '  rents  '  in  interest,  wages  and  profits,  as  well  as  in 
the  rent  of  land.  What  is  the  distinguishing  feature  of  this  com- 
mon element?  It  is  the  amount  which  the  capitalist  or  laborer  can 
get  for  his  service  (at  the  market  rate  which  is  uniform  for  all  like 
services) ,  which  is  in  excess  of  the  least  he  would  be  willing  to  sell 
it  for  if  he  could  not  get  more.  Much  of  the  interest  paid  on  the 
accumulations  both  of  the  poor  and  of  the  rich  is  of  this  character; 
the  poor  save  for  a  rainy  day,  and  the  rich  save  from  force  of 
habit,  —  in  either  case  the  amount  of  principal  saved  would  be 
about  the  same  if  interest  were  half  or  a  quarter  what  it  is.  In  the 
same  way  there  are  numerous  men  of  talent  in  business,  in  the 
professions  or  in  art,  who  would  do  just  as  good  work  if  the  market 
value  of  their  services  happened  to  be  half  or  a  hundredth  what  it 
is.  Caruso  presumably  would  have  caroled  just  as  melodiously 
if  the  riches  of  America  had  not  existed  and  he  could  sing  only  to 
his  poorer  countrymen  in  Italy.  The  fortunate  possessor  of  talent 


8  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

or  capital  often  gets  the  same  kind  of  lucky  '  rent/  therefore,  as 
does  the  owner  of  a  farm  on  which  oil  is  discovered.  And  a  great 
part  of  the  significance  of  distribution  theory  depends  on  the 
assumptions  as  to  producers'  motives  with  which  you  start. 

Here  again,  however,  the  economist  must  have  his  eye  on  some 
external  necessities  which  are  not  psychological,  and  cannot  be 
changed  by  wishing.  One  of  the  chief  of  these  is  the  principle  of 
Proportionality,  or  '  diminishing  productivity,'  out  of  which  the 
famous  '  specific  productivity  '  theory  of  distribution  was  for- 
mulated by  Clark.  For  the  production  of  any  consumable  good 
numerous  ingredients  are  necessary,  including  different  kinds  of 
labor.  The  proportion  in  which  these  ingredients  may  be  used 
is  usually  not  fixed;  one  may  farm  with  much  land  and  little 
capital  and  labor,  or  with  much  capital  (tools)  relatively  to  the 
others,  or  with  varying  proportions  of  skilled  to  unskilled  men, 
and  so  on.  By  successively  increasing  the  use  of  any  one  ingre- 
dient, all  others  remaining  the  same,  the  total  product  will  be 
increased  for  a  time  at  each  step,  but  at  a  diminishing  rate. 
Finally  more  land  or  machinery  or  one  kind  of  labor  will  not  result 
in  any  increase  at  all.  Hence  if  the  farmer  is  to  be  induced  to  buy 
anything  which  he  already  has  in  abundance  (relatively  to  the 
factors  with  which  he  must  combine  it),  this  article  must  be 
offered  him  at  a  lower  and  lower  price,  until  finally  he  will  give 
nothing  at  all  for  more  of  it.  It  will  be  superabundant,  as  water  is 
to  some  farmers,  or  apples  rotting  on  the  trees.  In  these  circum- 
stances, whatever  water  or  apples  or  land  he  can  use  are  physically 
just  as  necessary  as  any  other  ingredient  in  his  process,  and  just  as 
meritorious  from  a  moral  point  of  view,  but  it  is  impossible  to 
conceive  of  his  going  into  the  market  outside  and  buying  more  of 
them,  for  more  would  be  of  no  use  to  him.  He  would  spend  his 
money  on  the  scarcer  elements,  which  would  mean  an  increase  in 
his  final  product.  We  must  look  for  a  strain  of  this  policy  to  run 
through  his  acts,  even  though  he  makes  mistakes  in  detail,  and 
we  assume  he  will  always  have  his  eye  on  the  largest  profit,  which 
represents  goods  that  consumers  most  want.  (This  assumption, 
however,  is  getting  back  to  psychologizing.)  So  that  all  values  of 
producers'  goods,  including  the  value  of  a  given  kind  of  labor,  are 


HUMAN  NATURE  IN  ECONOMICS  9 

governed  by  technical  conditions  quite  as  much  as  by  the  whims 
of  the  buyers ;  which  is  a  more  accurate  way  of  saying  that  value 
depends  on  supply  and  demand. 

If  the  value  of  common  labor  or  of  school  teachers  is  low,  there- 
fore, we  must  inquire  how  the  supply  of  it  got  out  of  proportion  to 
the  more  highly  paid  labor  which  is  required  in  conjunction  with 
it.  We  are  thus  presently  led  into  the  subject  of  Population,  and 
the  Malthusian  discussion.  The  older  economists  prophesied, 
from  what  they  saw  of  the  facts  of  animal  fertility,  that  wages 
must  always  remain  near  the  minimum  of  subsistence,  since  if 
more  were  secured,  population  could  increase  until  wages  were 
brought  down  again.  That  was  the  purport  of  Ricardo's  Iron 
Law  of  Wages.  But  the  declining  birth  rates  in  all  civilized  coun- 
tries over  the  past  fifty  years,  with  France's  population  now 
nearly  stationary  —  and  in  the  face  of  a  considerably  higher  level 
of  real  wages  than  the  preceding  century  knew  —  has  called  at- 
tention to  the  psychological  factors  of  the  Standard  of  Living  and 
Birth  Control,  which  must  be  studied  in  relation  to  the  theory  of 
wages. 

Practical  Uses  of  Knowledge  oe  Motives 

So  much  for  the  more  important  psychological  issues  of  eco- 
nomic theory.  Though  it  is  hard  for  most  readers  to  avoid  being 
deceived,  by  the  abstract  language  of  science,  into  thinking  of 
these  as  mere  '  academic  questions,'  we  must,  in  the  interests  of 
economy  of  space,  forbear  to  trace  their  emergence  into  such 
practical  issues  as  tax  systems,  poor  laws,  trade  policies,  public 
regulations  on  business,  state  ownership  of  railroads  or  other 
means  of  production,  and  the  whole  general  issue  of  collectivism 
vs.  individualism.   Taussig,  discussing  Socialism,  says: 

The  questions  between  private  property  and  socialism  are  thus  at  bottom 
questions  as  to  men's  character,  motives,  ideals.  They  are  questions,  in  so 
far,  of  psychology;  in  more  familiar  language,  of  human  nature.  They  are 
not  simple,  but  highly  complex;  because  human  nature  is  highly  complex.^ 

His  two  chapters  on  this  subject  would  perhaps  be  the  best  intro- 
duction to  our  study,  especially  since  they  inspired  the  present 

^  Principles  of  Economics,  Ch.  65,  sec.  6.  Compare  the  excellent  discussion,  in 
the  same  spirit,  in  A.  Wagner,  Grundlegung  der  polit.  Okonomie,  3d  ed.  (1892), 
pp.  72  ff. 


lO  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

writer  to  undertake  it.  In  politics,  education,  ethics  —  in  the 
study  of  human  affairs  generally  - —  the  larger  problems  are  still 
those  questions  of  human  nature  with  which  Plato  and  his  pred- 
ecessors grappled :  what  is  constant,  what  is  variable  and  how  is 
it  variable,  in  man's  mental  endowment?  Why  do  men  fight?  has 
been  the  stumbling  block  of  schemes  for  international  organiza- 
tion throughout  the  centuries,  and  of  many  other  projects  of 
brotherly  love.  Are  some  children  innately  more  '  worth  '  educat- 
ing than  others?  At  least,  how  may  education  and  industry  be 
best  adjusted  to  their  (supposedly)  different  natural  capacities? 
Two  branches  of  business  psychology,  having  large  money-making 
potentialities,  also  depend  on  these  same  fundamentals,  —  we 
refer  to  advertising  and  employment  psychology. 

Considering,  then,  the  import  which  the  obscure  laws  of  human 
nature  have  for  all  our  social  institutions  and  even  for  private 
prosperity,  we  may  condone  somewhat  the  unbalanced  exploita- 
tions of  alleged  discoveries  in  psychology  which  we  see  about  us 
every  day;  and,  realizing  that  it  is  hopeless  to  expect  to  answer 
most  of  the  questions  we  have  raised,  do  what  we  can  toward 
fitting  together  whatever  fragments  can  be  found  of  the  master 
key  that  will  fit  all  these  locks. 

Now  the  objection  may  be  raised  by  others  than  economists  — 
and  it  is  sure  to  be  raised  by  many  of  the  latter  —  that  while  all 
we  have  said  may  be  true,  there  is  still  no  evidence  that  econ- 
omists have  anything  to  gain  from  excursions  into  psychology. 
They  (the  economists)  often  speak  of  '  the  economic  motive,' 
meaning  the  general  desire  for  more  wealth,  as  distinguished  from 
the  motives  of  family,  conscience,  and  so  on,  and  then  say  that 
economics  seeks  only  propositions  which  follow  from  this  one 
powerful  force  (comparable,  say,  to  gravitation),  without  denying 
that  there  are  '  disturbing,'  unbusiness-like  motives,  which  make 
economic  life  in  detail  a  little  different  from  what  it  would  be  if  all 
people  were  actually  moved  only  by  the  desire  to  make  money. 
Such  was,  theoretically,  the  position  of  leaders  like  Senior,  Mill 
and  Bagehot.  It  seems  obvious  that  in  modern  business,  at  least, 
the  most  important  single  key  to  men's  doings  is  search  for  the 
greatest  gain;  and  so  economics,  the  science  of  business,  may  take 


HUMAN  NATURE  IN  ECONOMICS  II 

this  motive  for  granted,  and  leave  to  speculative  dreamers  the 
task  of  philosophizing  over  what  men  want  money  for.  And 
similarly  the  practical  man  may  say  that  the  principle  of  self- 
interest  — '  people  are  out  for  all  they  can  get '  —  is  a  good 
enough  key  to  human  affairs  for  him. 

The  economists  of  an  earlier  day  deliberately  connected  their 
theory  on  this  point  with  the  doctrine  of  motives  generally 
believed  by  philosophers  of  the  time,  called  Psychological  He- 
donism. This  doctrine  avers  that  all  men  act  cannily  to  secure 
the  greatest  possible  pleasure  or,  what  was  supposed  to  come  to 
the  same  thing,  the  most  complete  exemption  from  pain.  Any 
person  was  supposed,  that  is,  before  willing  any  action,  to  make  a 
quick  calculation  of  the  probable  results  in  pleasure  or  pain  to 
himself  of  each  of  the  possible  courses  he  might  take,  and  then  to 
choose  and  carry  out  that  course  which  promises  the  largest  he- 
donic  results.  So  that  the  philosopher-economists  no  less  than  the 
business-men-economists  of  the  time,  found  it  easy  to  assume 
that  the  pursuit  of  '  utiUty,'  '  pleasure,'  '  wealth,'  all  mean  about 
the  same  thing,  and  all  are  carried  on  rationally,  calculatingly,  by 
mankind  in  general. 

Everyone  will  see,  however,  if  he  stops  to  think,  that  theory  on 
this  simple  premise  of  motivation  is  but  a  rough  approximation, 
and  often  badly  misleading  in  practice. 

Many  of  us  are  willing  enough  to  believe  that  certain  socialistic 
leaders  are  actuated  only  by  gain-seeking,  but  we  protest  vig- 
orously against  their  '  economic  determinism  '  so  far  as  it  means 
that  we  are  fighting  merely  to  hang  onto  our  '  privileges  '  and  are 
'  exploiting  '  every  other  human  being  so  far  as  we  possibly  can. 
When  the  nation  is  in  danger,  or  some  catastrophe  has  made 
thousands  hungry  or  homeless,  do  we  think  it  vain  to  appeal  to 
other  than  mercenary  motives?  It  is  only  by  a  shrewd  knowledge 
of  the  human  springs  of  action  which  will  cause  large  numbers  to 
act  against  their  economic  advantage,  that  such  enterprises  can 
be  carried  on.  War  and  extraordinary  distress  are  not  the  typical 
situations,  is  the  reply  usually  given  by  economists.  What 
people  will  do  in  such  times  they  will  not  do  in  ordinary  business. 
That  is  true,  but  are  we  so  sure  of  what  human  nature  is  ulti- 


12  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

mately  capable,  in  ordinary  business?  Is  it  so  certain  that  pa- 
triotism cannot  some  day  be  invoked  by  everyday  tasks? 

And  even  at  the  level  of  everyday  business  life,  there  are  many 
observers  who  contend  that  economic  self-interest  by  no  means 
furnishes  the  main  clue  to  men's  actions.  A  certain  large  de- 
partment store,  for  example,  allows  none  of  its  buyers  or  other 
representatives  to  travel  on  Sunday,  and  since  but  few  outsiders 
are  aware  of  this  rather  expensive  policy,  it  cannot  be  attributed 
to  clever  advertising.  Many  other  examples  of  conscientious 
scruples  thwarting  the  motive  of  gain  might  easily  be  collected. 
Or  consider  the  case  of  powerful  daily  newspapers,  having  lists  of 
the  proprietor's  personal  enemies  who  are  not  on  any  account  to 
be  mentioned  favorably.  A  certain  highly  successful  motor-car 
manufacturer  is  reported  to  be  implementing  his  vast  business 
organization  in  a  bitter  anti-semitic  campaign  upon  which  he  be- 
came launched  apparently  by  personal  associations.  Consulting 
experts  in  business  organization  testify  that  practically  every 
large  concern  they  enter  is  honeycombed  with  prejudices,  jeal- 
ousies and  cliques  which  must  be  analyzed  and  taken  account  of 
before  purely  efficiency  measures  can  be  suggested.  Labor  con- 
ciliators say  that  pride,  resentment,  the  itch  for  power,  are  often 
more  important  in  disputes  than  the  dollars  and  cents  at  stake. 

On  the  other  hand,  instances  may  be  multiplied  in  which  busi- 
ness men  have  learned  to  increase  their  profits  by  analyzing  out 
some  of  the  *  human  nature  '  quirks  of  the  people  they  deal  with.^ 

The  salesman  long  ago  found  the  theory  of  one  economic  mo- 
tive, self-interest,  too  simple  for  his  purposes,  and  so  he  turned  to 
psychological  inquiry  to  discover  how  he  might  persuade  people 
to  buy  his  article  at  a  higher  price  rather  than  a  competing  article 
just  as  good  for  a  lower  price.  The  employer  is  just  beginning  to 
find  that  his  labor  problems  do  not  turn  entirely  on  wages,  and  is 
developing  incentives  such  as  pride  in  the  business,  approbation 
for  good  work,  or  a  variety  of  tasks  for  each  worker. 

Considerations  like  these  have  tended  to  discredit  the  old  he- 
donist psychology,  and  have  raised  a  host  of  critics  in  the  eco- 
nomic world  against  many  points  of  economic  doctrine  which 
1  See,  for  instance,  Fred  C.  Kelley,  Business  Profits  and  Human  Nature. 


HUMAN  NATURE  IN  ECONOMICS  1 3 

they  consider  based  on  an  *  exploded  '  psychology.  These  attacks 
are  often  met  by  the  statement  that  economics  takes  as  premises 
only  what  men  are  seen  to  do,  and  consequently  is  not  involved  in 
psychological  disputes  as  to  why  they  act.^ 

As  will  appear  in  Part  III  of  the  present  work,  we  consider  that 
there  is  a  large  field  in  economics  for  which  the  reply  just  noticed 
is  valid;  in  which  the  economist  need  no  more  worry  about  the 
ultimate  facts  of  the  spiritual  nature  of  man  than  the  carpenter 
concerns  himself  about  the  higher  chemistry  of  wood.  At  the 
same  time,  as  we  have  attempted  above  to  show,  economic  ex- 
planation, even  as  it  is  most  narrowly  conceived,  does  bristle 
with  premises  that  are  really  psychological,  in  which  it  is  a  ques- 
tion of  fact  whether  the  hedonist  assumption  or  some  quite  dif- 
ferent version  is  true,  and  on  the  answer  to  which  the  accuracy  of 
the  economic  principle  depends.  Some  of  these  are  narrow  and 
specific  questions,  such  as,  How  far  do  the  facts  of  industry  bear 
out  the  marginal  utility  theory  of  value?  —  while  others  are  vague 
and  general,  like  Is  self-interest  ineradicable? 

In  general  it  may  be  said  that  increased  accuracy  in  explana- 
tion of  the  processes  of  human  behavior  will  bring  forth  more 
effective  practical  control  in  all  the  social  fields,  just  as  the  art  of 
medicine  is  continually  improved  by  physiological  research,  or  the 
arts  of  engineering  and  carpentry  by  physical  research ;  but  this  is 
possible  only  on  the  condition  that  some  one  carries  the  results  of 
the  pure  sciences  which  are  relevant,  over  to  the  practical  fields  in 
such  form  that  they  may  be  of  use. 

Psychology  and  Economics  Both  'Behaviorist'  Sciences 

One  more  scruple  of  the  economist  may  be  noticed.  He  is  per- 
haps doubtful  if  psychology  has  really  been  working  on  problems 
that  are  relevant  to  economics.  We  venture  to  say  there  are  much 

^  See  "The  Relations  of  Recent  Psychological  Developments  to  Economic 
Theory,"  by  the  present  writer,  in  Quar.  Jour.  Econ.,  May,  1919,  for  a  fuller  and 
more  technical  examination  of  this  controversy.  It  is  because  of  this  long  dispute 
that  we  give  so  much  attention  below  to  the  subject  of  hedonism  and  '  rationality.' 
The  subject  is  a  crucial  one,  however,  in  other  connections  than  economic,  — 
especially  in  poHtical  theory.  See,  for  example,  G.  Wallas,  Human  Nature  in 
Politics  and  The  Great  Society. 


14  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

closer  relations  between  the  methods  and  subject-matter  of  the 
two  sciences  than  is  usually  realized. 

In  the  first  place,  the  human  want  is  a  central  unit  for  both 
sciences ;  one  might  almost  say  that  both  are  built  around  it.  The 
economist  observes  that  people  want  to  possess  and  consume  cer- 
tain objects  such  as  food,  or  services  such  as  barbering,  and  that 
these  wants  drive  them  into  the  activities  of  production.  Con- 
versely, production  and  value  are  definable  in  terms  of  wants, 
rather  than  of  any  special  ty^e  of  mechanical  performance.  Eco- 
nomic wants,  we  may  say,  are  easily  inferred  from  what  men  do, 
and  economics  as  a  science  deals  with  the  activities  of  men  toward 
satisfying  such  desires. 

What  is  the  psychologist's  business  with  wants?  He  uses  the 
term  response  or  motive  to  designate  an  entity  which  is  essentially 
the  same  as  that  we  call  '  want ' ;  and  he  points  out  that  any  re- 
sponse involves  three  elements  (besides  the  living  organism  who  is 
its  subject) :  The  stimulus,  or  outer  object  upon  which  this  re- 
sponse hinges,  the  mode  of  response,  or  what  the  organism  does 
when  the  stimulus  is  presented,  and  the  neuro-muscular  mech- 
anism, by  which  such  behavior  is  elicited.  A  response,  the  psy- 
chologist is  now  careful  to  point  out,  is  not  to  be  thought  of 
merely  as  an  activity;  it  may  exist  merely  as  potential  behavior 
which  the  mechanism  is  set  to  execute  whenever  the  stimulus 
shall  appear.  Thus  it  becomes  clear  that  this  '  response  '  is  our 
'  want.'  And  psychology  tries  to  explain  the  general  principles  of 
response,  by  observing  all  three  of  these  elements.^ 

The  economist,  therefore,  is  a  psychologist  in  spite  of  himself, 
engaged  in  explaining  a  special  type  of  behavior,  with  his  eye  on 
the  stimuli  (wealth,  and  the  various  other  features  of  the  en- 

^  See  E.  B.  Holt,  The  Freudian  Wish  (1915),  for  a  readable  psychological  exposi- 
tion along  this  line.  The  reader  may  not  be  able  to  harmonize  our  account  with  the 
psychology  of  sensations,  feelings,  consciousness,  which  he  has  perhaps  cultivated, 
but  the  substantial  identity  of  the  two  will  be  brought  out  in  the  following  chapters. 
Briefly  it  may  be  said  that  sensation  generally  parallels  response,  so  that  the  same 
phenomenon  may  be  viewed  either  subjectively,  as  what  the  subject '  feels,'  '  thinks,' 
etc.,  or  objectively  (from  the  '  behaviorist '  standpoint),  as  what  he  'does.'  As 
Woodworth  points  out  (Dynamic  Psychology  (1918),  pp.  34,  35),  the  business  of 
psychology  has  always  been  to  investigate  the  '  workings  of  the  mind,'  so  as  to  learn 
how  people  come  to  feel  and  act  as  they  do. 


HUMAN  NATURE  IN  ECONOMICS  1 5 

vironment),  and  on  the  behavior  they  elicit  from  his  subjects.  It 
is  questionable  only  if  he  may  derive  anything  from  consideration 
of  the  physiological  mechanisms  involved.  Psychologists  will 
testify,  however,  that  their  science  has  made  most  progress  to- 
ward explaining  the  relations  between  stimuli  and  behavior  since 
it  has  given  attention  to  this  minute  machinery;  and  correspond- 
ingly, reasons  will  become  apparent  as  we  proceed  why  a  mini- 
mum of  familiarity  with  these  remote  processes  will  promote 
better  understanding  of  the  larger  behavior  by  the  social  scientist 
too. 


CHAPTER  II 

COMMON-SENSE  ANALYSIS  OF  MOTIVES 

Sources  of  Material 

We  have  indicated  in  a  general  way  how  the  psychological  anal- 
ysis of  human  motives  may  be  of  use  to  the  social  sciences,  in 
particular  to  economics.  We  now  enter  upon  such  an  analysis,  in 
the  hope  of  making  a  little  progress  on  the  old  questions:  What  are 
the  hidden  springs  which  cause  people  to  work  and  play,  to  save 
and  spend,  and  otherwise  to  behave  as  they  do?  According  to 
what  principles,  if  any,  do  their  motives  grow  and  decay?  Not 
only  the  questions  themselves,  but  most  of  the  answers  still  of- 
fered to  them  are  as  old  as  tradition.  They  have  been  discussed 
by  wise  men  in  every  age,  and  so  our  first  puzzle  is  concerning  the 
selection  of  material. 

Since  people  have  always  had  a  deep  interest  in  their  own  mo- 
tives, and  especially  in  the  motives  of  their  fellowmen  (knowing 
that  a  man's  conduct  depends  on  what  is  in  his  heart),  we  find 
shrewd  observations  on  character  and  on  the  leading  '  passions  ' 
of  human  nature  scattered  throughout  the  whole  of  recorded 
literature.  These  observations  show  impressively  how  little  the 
leading  complexes  of  motives  have  changed  since  men  began  to 
write  down  their  thoughts.  One  wonders  if  a  year  has  passed 
since  Plato  wrote  his  Republic,  in  which  some  reader  has  not  ex- 
claimed "That  might  have  been  written  only  yesterday!"  John 
Stuart  Mill,  in  outhning  the  science  of  character  or  '  Ethology,' 
considered  these  '  empirical '  observations  indispensable  for  such 
a  science.^  A  British  psychologist  recently  writing  on  the  subject 
has  adopted  Mill's  plan,^  and  turned  to  the  poets  for  classic  in- 
formation. History  and  biography  of  course  are  full  of  evidence 
on  motives ;  Taussig  used  such  testimony  effectively  in  discussing 
the  psychology  of  the  inventor.  One  always  turns  to  a  Napoleon 

*  Logic,  Book  VI,  chs.  iii  and  v. 
2  A.  F.  Shand,  Foundations  of  Character  (1914). 
16 


COMMON-SENSE  ANALYSIS  OF  MOTIVES  1 7 

or  Socrates  for  an  example  of  human  incentives  working  out  in  a 
large  way. 

In  the  old  maxims  and  theorizings,  however,  there  are  many- 
contradictions  and  especially  many  half-truths,  while  in  personal 
reminiscences  there  is  the  coloring  of  prejudice  and  apology;  so 
that  the  importance  of  Mill's  second  specification  for  an  ethology 
becomes  apparent :  the  empirical  observations  must  be  checked  up 
by  the  '  laws  of  mind,'  —  that  is,  by  the  science  of  psychology. 
The  latter's  method  is  empirical  too,  but  its  empiricism  is  under 
controlled,  standardized,  repeatable  conditions. 

The  general  subject  of  motives  has  received  its  fullest  treatment 
in  the  past,  however,  at  the  hands  of  moralists.  From  Socrates 
and  Plato  down  to  Sidgwick  and  Green,  these  authorities,  who 
were  usually  also  political  theorists,  have  been  formulating  ex- 
plicit theories  of  human  nature  to  serve  as  foundations  for  their 
various  ethical  and  political  doctrines.  We  summarize  some  of 
these  old  formulations  in  our  next  two  chapters,  partly  on  account 
of  their  historical  connection  with  economic  theory,  and  partly 
because  the  older  philosophers  were  among  the  keenest  observers 
of  men,  and  their  answers  to  the  fundamental  questions  give  us  a 
good  introduction  to  our  subject  as  well  as  a  condensed  picture  of 
the  human  nature  they  saw  about  them.  The  ethical  writers, 
however,  are  apt  to  be  biased  in  their  psychology  by  their  meta- 
physical preconceptions;  and  it  is  only  in  the  last  fifty  years,  that 
there  has  split  off  from  ethics  a  treatment  of  human  motives  in 
which  the  dominant  interest  is  what  actually  does  make  men  act, 
rather  than  how  they  should  act.  The  Mills,  Bain  and  James, 
for  instance,  were  scientific  psychologists  as  well  as  moralists. 
McDougall,  in  his  Social  Psychology  (1908),  complained  that 
professional  psychologists  had  left  the  study  of  the  human  springs 
of  action  to  ethical  writers  until  this  province  was  "the  most 
backward  department  in  psychology."  As  we  shall  see  in  a  mo- 
ment, a  complete  theory  of  action,  or  of  motives,  requires  a  com- 
plete psychology,  so  that  there  was  some  excuse  for  the  backward 
condition  he  lamented.  Nevertheless  it  was  high  time  for  one  of 
the  craft  to  gather  up  what  was  known  on  the  subject,  and  espe- 
cially to  put  it  into  such  form  as  is  useful  to  the  social  sciences. 


1 8  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

McDougall  has  therefore  earned  the  gratitude  of  every  student  of 
these  discipHnes.  It  is  questionable  if  there  is  not  more  of  the 
whole  truth  in  William  James  than  in  McDougall,  but  James' 
catholicity,  which  makes  him  such  a  fertile  source  of  suggestions 
today,  made  him  entertain  a  large  number  of  contradictory  doc- 
trines, while  McDougall,  if  one-sided,  is  consistent. 

In  the  present  analysis  we  are  obliged  to  neglect  the  older  and 
wider  sources  of  material  just  mentioned  (except  classical  mor- 
aUsts  considered  in  the  next  two  chapters),  because  the  scientific 
psychological  work  of  the  last  thirty  or  forty  years  is  so  volumi- 
nous that  we  shall  be  able  to  use  only  a  small  part  of  it,  and  because 
its  methods  seem  to  promise  the  most  help  in  the  future.  The 
maxims  of  shrewd,  ancient  common  sense  are  always  sufl&cient  for 
many  purposes,  but  the  more  careful,  repeated,  quantitative 
observations  of  isolated  parts  of  the  phenomena,  which  char- 
acterize scientific  method,  usually  give  us  in  the  end  still  larger 
control  over  nature.  The  old  bridges  and  canals,  the  housewife's 
primitive  hygienic  practices,  the  farmer's  or  seaman's  skill  in 
forecasting  the  weather,  all  owe  little  or  nothing  to  science  in  the 
modern  sense ;  but  we  have  had  better  bridges  and  medicine  since 
the  conditions  have  been  studied  scientifically,  and  we  hope 
therefore  that  some  day  we  shall  be  able  better  to  predict  the 
weather  and  also  human  responses  to  given  stimuli,  by  reason  of 
the  minute  and  fragmentary  researches  of  the  specialists.^  Yet 
as  our  conclusions  wiU  indicate,  psychology  is  still  so  far  from 
supplying  adequate  answers  to  the  large  questions  of  human 
nature  which  we  have  raised,  particularly  as  to  the  relative 
strength  of  motives,  or  the  exact  contributions  of  instinct  and  ex- 
perience, that  for  most  purposes  of  social  art  the  data  of  the  other 
social  sciences,  and  the  wisdom  of  men  of  affairs  are  as  yet  the 
best  guide  to  be  had.  What  we  may  draw  from  psychology  now  is 
mainly  in  the  nature  of  suggestive  hj^otheses  for  further  investi- 
gation. 

^  Graham  Wallas,  in  Human  Nature  in  Politics,  Pt.  I,  ch.  v,  shows  the  advan- 
tages of  the  quantitative  character  of  modern  social  knowledge.  It  is  usually  more 
helpful  to  show  in  what  proportions  certain  things  are  desirable  or  in  existence  than 
simply  that  they  are  needed  or  do  exist.  Mr.  Wallas  cites  the  equilibrium  curves  of 
economics  as  an  example  of  this  quantitative  scientific  method. 


COMMON-SENSE  ANALYSIS  OF  MOTIVES  19 

Fundamentals  of  All  Motives  Needed 

Since  we  have  just  been  speaking  of  the  human  motives  in  a 
very  general,  inclusive  way,  we  may  be  reproached  at  once  for 
wandering  into  fields  irrelevant  to  economic  motives.  The  desires 
with  which  the  sages  and  moralists  have  to  deal  are  of  one  kind, 
we  may  be  told,  but  those  of  interest  to  the  economist  are  an- 
other. The  '  desire  for  wealth  '  is  often  spoken  of  as  the  economic 
motive.  But  does  it  appear  that  there  is  any  human  incentive 
which  may  not  at  times  give  rise  to  economic  activity?  The 
desire  for  wealth  is  not  an  elementary  desire ;  it  is  a  compound 
including  at  various  times  the  love  of  family,  the  desire  for  esteem 
by  one's  fellows,  the  hunger  for  creature  comforts  and  for  objects 
of  beauty,  and  very  likely  numerous  others.  A  man's  wants  for 
economic  goods  and  his  consequent  responses  to  the  bribe  of 
wealth,  are  always  sophisticated,  they  are  the  joint  product  of  his 
native  instincts  and  sensibilities,  and  of  his  material  and  social 
environment.  Differences  in  these  factors,  which  include  moral, 
religious  and  esthetic  suggestions,  make  the  missionary's  desire 
for  wealth  of  quite  another  hue  than  the  worldling's,  and  the  in- 
dolent savage's  economic  motives  remote  from  those  of  the 
apostle  of  industrial  progress.  Finally,  there  are  motives  which 
cannot  be  included  in  the  desire  for  wealth,  which  are  still  eco- 
nomic, such  as  the  creative  bent  or  '  instinct  of  workmanship,'  the 
fear  of  corporal  punishment,  and  the  desire  for  social  approval  of 
one's  efforts,  as  distinguished  from  approval  of  his  acquisition} 
We  must,  therefore,  investigate  as  best  we  can  the  fundamentals 
of  the  whole  theory  of  action,  although  a  complete  theory  of 
action  would  mean  a  complete  and  perfect  psychology. 

What  are  the  fundamental  factors  which  determine  our  be- 
havior? If  we  examine  more  closely  the  common-sense  doctrine 
of  psychological  hedonism,  we  shall  get  some  suggestions  as  to 
how  the  search  must  proceed. 

^  Compare  Fetter,  Principles  of  Economics  (1905),  p.  14:  "whatever  motive  in 
man's  complex  nature  makes  him  desire  things  more  or  less,  becomes  for  the  time, 
and  in  so  far,  an  economic  motive."  E.  g.,  he  points  out,  a  religious  attitude 
toward  fish  affects  the  fish  market. 


20  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

The  explanation  that  people  usually  act  to  secure  pleasure  and 
to  avoid  pain  has  always  suggested  itself  spontaneously  whenever 
the  inquiry  as  to  the  natural  grounds  of  action  was  raised.  The 
general  conformity  of  this  view  with  the  facts  of  experience  is  so 
marked  that  it  need  only  be  stated  to  win  the  assent  of  a  person 
not  already  corrupted  by  philosophy.  And  so  there  have  been 
bold  generalizers  throughout  all  ages  who  asserted  not  only  that 
people  generally  act  for  the  sake  of  hedonic  consequences  but  that 
always  they  do.  "Nature  has  placed  mankind  under  two  sov- 
ereign masters,  pain  and  pleasure,"  as  Bentham  said.  As  we  have 
already  observed,  objectors  then  come  forward  with  many  ex- 
amples of  conduct  which  is  not  actuated  by  the  prospect  of 
pleasant  consequences  to  the  agent,  and  ask  the  hedonists  what 
they  are  going  to  do  about  these.  The  object  of  one's  action  may 
be  the  advancement  of  another  person's  happiness  or  the  realiza- 
tion of  an  abstract  ideal,  and  it  may  be  at  the  cost  of  the  agent's 
own  happiness  (or  pleasure) ;  or  the  act  may  be  due  to  nothing 
more  than  unreflecting  habit;  or  perhaps  it  was  just  upon  an  im- 
pulse of  which  the  agent  could  give  no  account  except  that  he  had 
to  obey  it. 

Then  the  hedonist  is  likely  to  twist  his  argument  into  another 
form.  The  future  pleasure  of  the  agent  is  not  what  motivates  him, 
perhaps,  but  that  course  of  action  is  chosen  which  is  most  agree- 
able for  the  moment.  The  consequences  may  prove  thoroughly 
disagreeable  to  him,  but  his  action  is  nevertheless  in  the  line  of 
least  resistance.  Howard  spent  an  apparently  miserable  life  de- 
voted to  prison  reform;  that  however  was  the  life  he  found  it 
pleasant  to  choose. 

Both  hedonistic  theories  at  this  stage  are  reasoning  in  a  circle : 
A  man  does  that  which  is  pleasant  to  him,  either  in  the  willing  or 
in  the  consequences.  And  what  is  pleasant  to  him?  That  which 
he  does.  There  is  no  independent  entity,  in  terms  of  which  both 
'  pleasure  '  and  'will'  may  be  explained.  The  opponents  of  he- 
donism likewise  must  exhibit  indisputably  simpler  determinants 
of  action,  not  related  to  pleasure  and  pain,  in  order  to  advance  the 
discussion.  How  comes  about  the  attachment  of  '  self-realiza- 
tion '  desire  to  certain  lines  of  conduct?  Whence  comes  the  exist- 


COMMON-SENSE  ANALYSIS  OF  MOTIVES  21 

ence  and  power  of  '  ideas  '  which  successfully  oppose  pleasure  and 
pain,  according  to  the  '  ideomotor  '  theories?    And  so  on. 

Can  we  say,  then,  that  the  hedonistic  explanation  of  motives 
which  the  Bentham  school  popularized  was  no  explanation  at  all 
but  a  mere  circular  reasoning?  By  no  means.  For  they  exhibited 
an  element  of  pleasure  simpler  than  that  of  any  concrete  action, 
namely,  the  pleasure  of  the  simple  bodily  sensation.^  Assuming 
this  element  and  the  principle  of  '  association  of  ideas,'  whose  far- 
reaching  effects  were  just  beginning  to  be  appreciated,  they 
taught  that  all  motives,  however  unsensuous  in  their  full  bloom 
they  may  seem  to  be,  are  really  produced  by  associations  of 
pleasant  or  painful  sensations  in  the  agent's  own  personal  ex- 
perience. The  force  of  association  is  so  powerful  between  mental 
states  (ideas)  which  are  experienced  close  together  in  time,  that 
pleasure  comes  to  be  felt  in  a  pursuit  of  an  object  originally  indif- 
ferent to  the  agent,  simply  because  he  has  experienced  it  a  number 
of  times  in  association  with  some  other  event  that  was  intrin- 
sically pleasant.  And  contrariwise  originally  pleasant  associa- 
tions may  fix  a  habit  so  firmly  that  it  will  move  the  agent  after  the 
pleasant  associations  have  disappeared. 

It  may  be,  of  course,  that  all  motives  cannot  be  fitted  into  such 
a  simple  formula,  but  at  least  the  psychological  hedonism  of  the 
Utilitarians,  which  attempts  to  analyze  complex  motives  into  the 
feeling-tone  of  simple  sensations,  by  means  of  the  principle  of 
association,  proposes  an  analysis  which  is  highly  valuable  if  it  is 
accurate.  It  makes  the  elementary  motives  much  fewer  than  can 
be  discovered  by  adult  introspection,  and  it  offers  almost  un- 
limited possibihties  for  social  control  through  artificial  associa- 
tion,— that  is  to  say,  through  education.  If  the  analysis  is  not 
universally  true,  perhaps  it  may  be  vahd  within  a  limited  sphere, 
and  in  so  far  useful.   We  shall  find,  in  fact,  this  question  of  the 

^  Even  this  conception  is  not  so  unambiguous  as  it  seems,  as  will  appear  when  we 
consider  pain  and  pleasure,  pleasantness  and  unpleasantness,  more  in  detail.  The 
sensation  of  pain  is  sometimes  pleasant.  But  it  is  fairly  accurate  to  say  that  the 
simple  sensations  are  either  pleasant,  painful  (unpleasant)  or  indifferent.  It  is  more 
doubtful  if  all  states  of  feeling  are  thu3  accounted  for  by  the  tones  of  elementary 
sensations,  but  for  the  present  let  us  assume  that  all  kinds  of  pleasures  have  the 
same  general  effect  on  action,  and  that  all  classes  of  unpleasantness  or  pain  have  the 
opposite  general  effect. 


22  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

role  of  pleasure  and  pain  as  determinants  of  human  behavior 
running  like  a  thread  through  all  psychological  discussions  of  the 
springs  of  action ;  and  it  will  appear  that  a  completely  satisfactory 
explanation  of  the  facts  has  never  been  found.  There  is  also  the 
related  problem  of  the  emotions,  with  their  characteristic  bodily 
expressions;  they  have  long  been  believed  potent  movers  to 
action. 

Beside  the  pains  and  pleasures  of  sensation,  there  are  several 
other  mental  entities  which  have  always  been  staple  articles  in  the 
theory  of  motives.  Men  certainly  do  not  always  act  for  the  sake 
of  immediate  pleasures,  and  moreover  they  have  knowledge  which 
seems  distinct  from  feeling,  and  which  frequently  influences  their 
conduct  by  considerations  of  future  interests  causing  the  sacrifice 
of  present  pleasure  for  the  sake  of  future  gains.  And  so  we  have 
to  deal  with  the  intellect,  or  cognition,  or  the  special  part  of  it 
called  '  the  reason.'  The  qualities  of  sensation  (such  as  Hght, 
sound  or  touch,  considered  apart  from  their  agreeableness  or  dis- 
agreeableness)  give  us  immediate  knowledge  of  the  world  about 
us,  and  somehow  through  the  reason  we  infer  from  the  imme- 
diately given  sense-data,  knowledge  regarding  objects  remote  in 
space  and  time.  So  that  the  reason  mitigates  the  '  impulses,'  in 
some  sense,  by  foresight  of  remote  consequences,  desirable  and 
undesirable.  This  much  and  more  we  find  in  Aristotle's  theory  of 
motives. 

Almost  as  ancient  as  the  concepts  of  pleasure  or  desire  and  the 
reason  are  those  of  instincts  and  habits.  Both  of  these  names 
refer  to  definite  courses  of  action  which  tend  spontaneously, 
mechanically,  to  be  performed  whenever  the  agent  is  in  a  given 
external  situation.  The  difference  between  them  is  that  an  in- 
stinct is  supposed  to  be  hereditary  while  a  habit  is  acquired 
through  individual  experience.  Here  are  two  more  candidates, 
besides  pain,  pleasure  and  emotions,  for  the  role  of  motive. 

There  are  also  numerous  puzzling  overlappings  among  the 
foregoing  elements.  Instinctive  and  habitual  actions  are  usually 
in  some  degree  pleasant  or  painful;  hence  the  theorist,  if  he  is  so 
disposed,  can  assimilate  them  to  pleasure  and  pain.  Instincts  can 
be  distinguished  from  habits  only  with  the  greatest  difficulty, 


COMMON-SENSE  ANALYSIS  OF  MOTIVES  23 

because  of  the  helplessness  of  the  infant  and  the  unknown  possi- 
bilities of  the  learning  process;  so  that  the  theorist  may  deny  the 
existence  of  any  human  instincts.  Yet  there  are  facts  of  animal 
life  which  make  the  possibility  of  an  inheritable  untaught  ability 
evident  even  to  crude  observation.  Consequently,  throughout 
the  ages  our  authorities  have  argued  (or  assumed)  that  if  the 
ability  to  suck  and  cry  can  be  innate,  why  may  we  not  suppose 
that  other  abihties,  such  as  to  believe  in  the  external  world,  to  per- 
ceive space  and  time,  to  distinguish  between  right  and  wrong,  are 
also  innate  and  God-given?  The  hypothesis  of  instinct  is  thus  an 
exceedingly  natural  and  convenient  one.  The  *  passions  of  the 
soul,'  such  as  avarice  or  ambition,  have  always  been  regarded  as 
dominant  and  universal  human  motives,  sustained  by  pleasurable 
emotional  excitement,  so  that  in  the  absence  of  exact  knowledge 
they  could  be  regarded  as  either  instincts,  pleasures,  or  emotions. 
The  *  will '  was  frequently  regarded  in  the  older  days  as  another 
element  in  action  if  not  in  motives,  because  it  was  considered  a 
ghostly  power,  seated  in  the  heart  or  skull,  which  could  give 
commands  without  regard  to  the  agent's  desires  or  past  experi- 
ences. There  has  always  been  a  strong  disposition,  on  the  other 
hand,  to  consider  the  will  merely  as  a  stable  organization  of 
motives  somewhat  equivalent  to  '  character.' 

Some  Issues  Depending  on  Nature  of  Instincts. 

Thus  the  important  factors  determining  action  are  the  jostling 
impulses  —  desires  or  instincts  or  habits  or  whatever  else  they 
may  be  — •  and  the  reason  or  intellect  sitting  as  arbitrator  over 
them.  Our  task  is  to  learn  as  much  as  we  can  about  the  nature 
and  means  of  interaction  of  them  all.  We  must  get  the  instincts  as 
well  earmarked  and  described  as  possible,  for  upon  their  nature 
depends  many  of  the  grave  questions  noticed  in  the  previous 
chapter.  Revolutionists  have  always  inclined  to  believe  that  the 
'  natural  man  '  is  a  good-hearted,  sociable  fellow,  that  our  in- 
stincts naturally  lead  us  to  harmonious  and  happy  lives,  and  that 
society  (or  rather  its  rulers  the  kings,  priests  and  aristocracy) 
have  instituted  certain  conspiracies  of  law,  marriage,  and  in- 
equality of  wealth  and  luxury,  which  oppress  many  of  us  into 


24  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

rebellion.  The  more  hard-headed  (or  perhaps  hard-hearted) 
observers,  such  as  Aristotle,  Hobbes,  Malthus,  say  No;  the  in- 
stincts of  sex,  pugnacity,  rivalry,  and  of  natural  indolence,  in  a 
state  of  anarchy  would  make  men's  lives  supremely  miserable  by 
incessant  quarrels.  It  is  necessary,  therefore,  to  have  social 
institutions  which  balk  these  inordinate  tendencies,  by  pitting 
against  them  others  which  are  more  powerful  when  aroused,  but 
which  in  a  state  of  nature  are  aroused  only  after  the  mischief  by 
the  first  instincts  has  been  done.  The  prudential  instincts  are 
fear,  self-preservation,  the  love  of  luxury,  and  perhaps  others. 
They  are  to  be  opposed  against  the  rash  impulses  by  means  of  the 
reason,  which  foretells  the  long-run  consequences  and  which  can 
be  strengthened  through  education,  —  that  is,  made  a  more  and 
more  perfect  forecaster.  Some  of  the  most  important  questions  in 
economic  theory,  such  as  private  property,  competition  and 
theories  of  distribution,  as  we  have  seen  in  Chapter  I,  are  bound 
up  with  theory  concerning  these  relations  of  instinct  and  reason. 
In  spite  of  the  best  artificial  sanctions  and  education  which 
society  has  been  able  so  far  to  provide,  men  have  always  been 
prone  to  rash,  imprudent,  illegal  and  sinful  acts,  and  so  a  third 
standpoint  has  for  some  time  been  common.  Its  view  is  that, 
although  the  original  instincts  are  not  harmonious,  yet  they  are 
ineradicable  and  stubborn,  and  can  never  be  completely  subdued 
to  moral  or  prudent  levels  by  mere  social  threats  of  painful  con- 
sequences. Men  are  by  nature  able  to  be  "only  a  little  bit  reason- 
able," their  idleness  or  vice  is  not  to  be  successfully  combated  by 
distant  prospects  of  poverty  or  punishment,  for  they  are  animals 
with  only  imperfect  control  over  their  impulses.  Therefore  much 
of  society's  proceedings  on  the  assumption  of  complete  human 
responsibility  has  been  as  ineffective  as  punishment  of  the  in- 
sane.^ In  this  view  the  instincts  are  not  to  be  held  inviolable,  but 
are  to  be  circumvented  in  accordance  with  a  better  knowledge  of 
their  nature  just  as  we  circumvent  physical  obstacles  and  do  not 
merely  treat  them  with  contempt. 

1  Cf.  W.  E.  Hocking,  Human  Nature  and  Its  Remaking  (1918),  pp.  5,  6:  "It  is 
only  as  a  result  of  much  failure  in  the  effort  to  remake  men  that  the  question  of  pos- 
sibility gains  a  status  and  a  hearing.  It  is  this  same  experience  which  suggests  that 
there  is  such  a  thing  as '  human  nature,'  offering  a  more  or  less  constant  resistance  to 
the  remaking  process." 


COMMON-SENSE  ANALYSIS  OF  MOTIVES  2$ 

All  of  Psychology  Involved 

The  partial  mechanisms  of  action,  then  —  instinct,  habit,  pas- 
sion, the  reason  —  are  what  we  must  examine.  But  let  it  be 
noticed  that  the  whole  of  psychology  is  frequently  classified 
under  the  headings  Cognition,  Feeling  (Pleasure-pain  and  Emo- 
tion) and  Conation  (or  Volition) .  All  these  functions,  as  we  have 
seen,  are  involved  in  the  motives  to  action,  and  therefore  the  last 
word  will  be  said  on  motives  when  the  last  word  is  written  on 
psychology.  In  the  first  chapter  we  intimated  that  the  only  dis- 
coveries in  psychology  which  would  affect  economic  theory  would 
be  those  adding  importantly  to  our  knowledge  of  motives,  but  the 
fact  is  that  hardly  any  psychological  investigation  does  not  have 
some  bearing  on  this  problem.  The  conditions  of  feeling  and 
emotion  make  up  a  very  large  and  uncertain  subject  by  them- 
selves, and  the  cooperation  with  them  of  what  we  call  the  intel- 
lect or  reason  to  form  the  will,  make  another  library.  Gne  might 
devote  a  lifetime  to  a  scientific  study  of  the  conscience,  or  the 
sense  of  duty,  which  is  an  acknowledged  influence  on  action.  The 
laws  of  association  received  the  labors  of  a  number  of  the  older 
psychologists;  but  they  are  now  undergoing  treatment  at  the 
hand  of  a  large  corps  of  experimenters  in  laboratories.  The  psy- 
chopathic clinics  are  being  resorted  to  by  another  large  group  of 
students  for  insight  into  the  mechanism  of  motives.  The  various 
reaction-time,  discrimination  and  memory  experiments,  and 
especially  the  work  on  attention,  all  have  some  bearing  on  action, 
and  a  dozen  or  so  psychological  journals  are  steadily  setting  forth 
detailed  results  of  researches  which  are  raw  materials  for  such 
generalizations  as  this  study  aspires  to  be.  The  vast  complexity  of 
the  subject,  therefore,  must  extenuate  the  tentative  and  ob- 
viously inconclusive  character  of  the  present  account. 


CHAPTER  III 

ASSOCIATIONIST-HEDONISM:  ARISTOTLE,  HOBBES 

Object  of  Historical  Sketch 

Doubtless  there  are  many  who  believe,  with  Professor  Patten, 
that  McDougall's  treatment  of  motives  made  "such  a  radical 
reconstruction  that  a  discussion  of  the  older  views  becomes  a 
waste  of  time."  ^  For  our  special  purposes,  however,  it  seems 
worth  while  to  trace  once  more,  and  briefly,  the  historical  de- 
velopment of  the  associationist-hedonist  theory  of  action.  It 
would  be  entirely  possible  to  plunge  immediately  into  modern 
psychological  evidence,  which  is,  in  general,  of  greater  value  in 
proportion  to  volume;  but  since  the  alleged  psychological  errors 
of  the  classical  economists  occupy  a  large  place  in  present-day 
economic  criticism,  we  shall  feel  surer  of  our  ground  if  we  satisfy 
ourselves  just  how  bad  that  psychology  was.  As  Bentham  said  in 
his  Defence  of  Usury,  it  is  hardly  sufficient  to  show  the  logical  or 
factual  errors  of  an  old  established  view;  we  are  never  satisfied 
until  we  know  why  people  ever  believed  so  ridiculous  a  doctrine. 
Conversely,  we  are  better  satisfied  that  old  conclusions  are  correct 
if  we  are  assured  that  the  premises  used  to  arrive  at  them  were 
correct. 

Fortunately  for  the  purpose,  we  have  expHcit  psychological 
writings  by  Adam  Smith,  Bentham  and  the  two  Mills,  and  we 
know  that  the  chief  economists  of  the  eighteenth  and  nineteenth 
century  were  thoroughly  familiar  with  the  classical  philosophers 
and  moralists  who  preceded  them.  A  review,  therefore,  of  these 
important  sources  will  enable  us  to  understand  the  instructed 
thought  of  their  time  on  human  motives.  As  has  been  pointed 
out,  moreover,  the  easy  comprehensibility  of  the  associationist- 
hedonist  doctrine  makes  it  a  simplified  introduction  to  the  more 

^  "The  Mechanism  of  Mind,"  Annals  Amer.  Acad.  Pol.  and  Soc.  Sci.,  71:  202- 
215  (1917)- 

26 


ASSOCIATIONIST-HEDONISM  2/ 

refined  psychological  analysis  of  the  present  day,  even  supposing 
the  former  to  be  wholly  false.  So  far  as  we  yet  know,  however,  it  is 
not  wholly  false,  for  many  of  the  questions  considered  by  the 
older  psychologists  are  among  the  most  unsettled  in  the  science  of 
today;  and  the  answers  which  they  arrived  at  are  still  worth  con- 
sidering. Especially  are  their  catalogues  of  the  characteristic 
leading  human  motives  valuable  to  us,  in  our  quest  of  the  specific 
human  instincts  which  are  of  social  significance.  Every  classical 
psychologist  and  moralist  considered  it  part  of  his  business  to 
give  a  catalogue  of  the  chief  human  '  passions,'  and  since  modern 
psychology  cannot  yet  assert  confidently  what  the  really  heredi- 
tary interests  of  men  are,  the  older  estimates  are  still  to  be 
accounted  evidence. 

Aristotle 

The  first  considerable  body  of  doctrines  on  our  subject  is  in  the 
writings  of  Aristotle.  A  very  complete  and  explicit  theory,  in 
fact,  can  be  gathered  from  this  source.  ''The  Philosopher,"  as  he 
was  called  throughout  the  Middle  Ages,  taught  that  desires  for 
pleasure  and  for  the  avoidance  of  pain  constitute  the  motive 
forces  in  all  animals,  including  men;  and  that  in  men  alone  the 
reason  mediates  among  those  impulses  which  urge  toward  imme- 
diate satisfaction  and  those  having  future  reference,  so  as  to  secure 
a  prudent  course  giving  future  pleasures  and  pains  their  just  due. 
A  wise  and  long-run  policy  of  moderation  is  thus  possible  if  the 
man's  reason  is  strong  enough.  Pleasures  of  philosophic  contem- 
plation should  be  chiefly  relied  on  for  the  best  long-term  results. 
He  treated  of  the  relation  of  ideas  to  sensations  very  much  in  the 
manner  of  the  modern  associationists,  and  he  stated  the  laws 
governing  association  much  as  they  have  been  stated  ever  since. 
He  did  not  erect  the  principle  of  association  into  a  complete  ac- 
count of  knowledge  and  the  will,  however,  as  did  the  utilitarian 
psychologists.  Reason  seemed  to  him  an  independent  function  or 
faculty  of  the  soul,  which  discerns  relations  among  things  and 
argues  by  syllogisms.  To  an  explicit  theory  of  the  sensational 
origin  of  all  knowledge  and  desire,  with  association  as  the  prin- 
ciple of  their  organization,  he  seems  not  to  have  arrived,  although 
he  came  very  near  it. 


28  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

In  more  detail,  Aristotle's  account  of  an  idea  or  image,  in  rela- 
tion to  a  sensation,  was  this: 

For  an  active  stimulus  stamps  on  the  soul  a  sort  of  imprint  of  the  sensa- 
tion, analogous  to  stamping  with  a  seal  ring.^ 

The  principles  by  which  ideas  cohere,  or  are  associated,  he  men- 
tions several  times,  most  clearly  in  describing  the  process  of 
remembering : 

When,  therefore,  we  recoUect,  we  awaken  certain  antecedent  processes, 
and  continue  this  untU  we  call  up  that  particular  experience,  after  which  the 
desired  one  is  wont  to  appear.  That  is  why  we  hunt  through  a  series  in 
thought,  beginning  with  an  object  presently  before  us,  or  with  something 
else,  or  with  an  object  that  is  similar,  or  opposite,  or  contiguous.  In  this  way, 
recollection  is  awakened.  .  .  .  For  mental  movements  follow  one  another, 
this  one  after  that,  by  habituation  ...  for  just  as  things  are  mutually  re- 
lated in  their  order  of  succession,  so  also  are  the  mental  processes.^ 

Here  are  the  expressions  'similarity'  and ' contiguity '  which  Bain, 
one  of  the  last  and  most  influential  of  the  associationists,  con- 
sidered the  fundamental  principles  of  association  of  ideas.  Aris- 
totle's account  is  one  of  the  great-ancestors  of  the  naturalist 
formulation  of  knowledge  and  conduct. 

In  his  treatise,  On  the  Soul,  he  gives  a  pretty  definite  theory  of 
the  relations  of  pleasure,  desire,  and  reason  to  all  human  action, 
and  this  treatment  is  supplemented  by  hints  in  his  other  works, 
especially  the  Ethics  and  the  Rhetoric.^  ''It  is  always  the  object 
of  desire,"  says  Aristotle,  "that  excites  action  and  this  is  either 
the  good  or  the  apparent  good.  .  .  .  Evidently  the  psychical 
power  which  excites  to  action  has  the  nature  of  desire  as  we  call 
it."  4 

1  On  Memory  and  Recollection,  450a lo  (W.  A.  Hammond's  translation,  entitled 
Aristotle's  Psychology,  p.  199). 

^  Ibid.,  45ib7,  8;  452aii;  pp.  205,  206  of  translation. 

^  Professor  Hammond,  in  the  translation  above  mentioned,  gives  an  analysis  of 
Aristotle's  psychology,  based  not  only  on  his  own  translation  of  De  Anima  and 
Parva  Naturalia,  but  also  upon  the  other  works,  especially  the  two  versions  of  the 
Ethics  and  some  other  smaller  treatises.  Unaccountably  his  analysis  of  the  moral 
will  contains  no  references  to  the  Rhetoric.  It  is  evidently  constructed  carefully  and 
without  prejudice  in  the  light  of  modern  psychological  theory,  however,  so  that  we 
have  rehed  upon  a  verification  of  it  by  the  accompanying  translation  and  by  trans- 
lations of  the  Rhetoric,  Politics  and  parts  of  the  Ethics. 

*  De  Anuna  433a5,  6;  p.  133. 


ASSOCIATIONIST-HEDONISM  29 

He  then  identified  this  "power"  as  the  " desiderative  element 
of  the  soul"  as  distinguished  from  the  "nutritive,  sensitive,  ra- 
tional and  deHberative"  elements  (the  latter  two,  no  doubt, 
referring  to  theoretical  and  practical  reason). 

Desire  is  specifically  connected  with  imagination,  and  he  is 

mindful  that  the  latter  is  largely  concocted  of  ideas  or  imprints 

of  sensations : 

In  a  word,  then,  as  we  said  before,  an  animal  in  so  far  as  it  is  capable  of 
desire  is  capable  of  self -movement.  Desire,  however,  is  not  found  apart  from 
imagination,  and  all  imagination  is  either  rational  or  sensitive  in  origin,  and 
the  lower  animals  share  in  it.^ 

Now  what  are  the  things  desired?  Well,  as  we  have  quoted  him 
already,  "either  the  good  or  the  apparent  good."  In  a  number  of 
places  he  identifies  the  good,  as  seen  in  desire,  with  the  pleasant. 

The  acts  done  through  desire,  are  such  as  seem  pleasant  .  .  .  thus  to  put 
it  shortly,  aU  things  which  men  do  of  themselves  are  good  or  apparently 
good;  pleasant  or  apparently  pleasant;  for  I  reckon  among  goods,  riddance 
from  evils  or  apparent  evils,  and  the  exchange  of  a  greater  evil  for  a  less.^ 

Again,  in  discussing  the  question  of  movement  in  the  lower 

animals,  he  says: 

Is  it  possible  for  them  to  have  imagination  or  desire?  They  appear  to  feel 
pleasure  and  pain,  and  if  these  are  felt  they  must  necessarily  have  desire 
also.^ 

Now  as  to  the  role  of  reason  in  action,  he  speaks  sometimes  of 
the  theoretical  reason  and  again  of  the  practical  reason,  meaning 
that  the  soul  functions  sometimes  in  discriminating  the  true  from 
the  false,  and  sometimes  in  distinguishing  the  good  from  the  bad. 
The  '  faculty  psychology  '  —  teaching  that  the  various  mental 
powers  such  as  reason  and  memory  are  seated  in  different  parts  of 
the  body  or  brain  —  arose  with  Plato,  but  its  essence  was  re- 
jected by  Aristotle.  The  soul  to  him  was  a  unity  residing  in  the 
heart;  and  its  function  could  be  classified  into  '  powers  '  or  '  facul- 
ties '  only  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  onlooker.   The  practical 

^  De  Anima  433bio;  p.  134. 

2  Rhetoric,  Book  I,  ch.  x  (Jebb's  translation). 

'  De  Anima  43ai;  p.  136.  Also,  "the  fact  that  all  animals,  brute  and  human 
alike,  pursue  pleasure,  is  some  presumption  of  its  being  in  a  sense  the  chief  Good."  — 
Nic.  Eth.,  1153b,  Book  VII,  ch.  xiii. 


30  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

reason  expresses  itself  in  the  form  of  a  syllogism  with  an  impera- 
tive conclusion.  The  major  premise,  for  instance,  is  "A  man 
should  take  exercise."  Since  I  am  a  man,  it  follows  that  I  should 
take  exercise. 

So  that  it  is  reasonable  to  regard  these  two  principles,  viz.,  desire  and 
practical  reason,  he  says,  as  motor  forces.  .  .  .  However,  reason  does  not 
appear  to  produce  movement  independently  of  desire.  .  .  .  Reason,  then,  is 
in  every  case  right,  but  desire  and  imagination  may  be  right  or  wrong.^ 

We  recognize  here  the  heart  of  relativist  ethics,  —  the  non- 
moral  character  of  single  impulses,  considered  by  themselves. 

He  is  sometimes  compelled  to  speak  of  the  practical  reason  as  a 
kind  of  appetite  or  desire,  since  obviously  in  some  sense  it  strug- 
gles with  desires,  just  as  desires  struggle  with  one  another : 

Although  desires  arise  which  are  opposed  to  each  other,  as  is  the  case  when 
reason  and  appetite  are  opposed,  it  happens  only  in  creatures  endowed  with 
a  sense  of  time.  (For  reason,  on  account  of  the  future,  bids  us  resist,  whUe 
desire  regards  the  present;  the  momentarily  pleasant  appears  to  it  as  the 
absolutely  pleasant  and  the  absolutely  good,  because  it  does  not  see  the 
future.)  2 

The  practical  reason,  it  thus  appears,  is  a  due  regard  for  future 
pleasure,  —  in  other  words  it  is  prudence.  And  prudence  is,  in 
fact,  Aristotle's  great  virtue.  He  rejects  the  Socratic  doctrine 
that  virtue  is  knowledge,  since  the  sphere  of  the  moral  life  he  con- 
siders to  be  among  pleasures  and  pains  rather  than  in  knowledge, 
though  he  claims  that  "one  cannot  be,  strictly  speaking,  good 
without  Practical  Wisdom,  nor  Practically- Wise  without  moral 
goodness,"  ^  seeing  that  the  widest  knowledge  is  necessary  to  the 
greatest  prudence.  From  the  series  of  voluntary  decisions,  a  ha- 
bitual kind  of  conduct  is  generated,  which  is  the  moral  character. 
There  is  a  brief  outline  of  Aristotle's  psychology  of  action  or  of 
motives.  The  remaining  point  of  interest  to  us  is  his  treatment  of 
the  leading  interests  of  human  nature.  He  discusses  these  most 
explicitly  in  the  Rhetoric,  for  the  immediate  purpose  —  rather 
common  then  among  rhetoricians  —  of  teaching  orators  how  best 
to  persuade  or  appeal  to  the  emotions  of  their  audiences.  Some  of 

1  De  Anima  433a;  p.  133.     Cf.  Nic.  Eth.,  1139. 

2  Ibid.,  433b7;  P-  i33- 

'  Nic.  Eth.  1144b,  Book  VT,  ch.  xiii.   Cf.  Rhetoric  Book  I,  ch.  vi,  list  of  goods. 


ASSOCIA  TIONIST-HEDONISM  3 1 

his  advice  is  worth  our  while  yet.  You  must  pay  attention  not 
only  to  the  logic  of  your  arguments,  he  tells  his  students,  but  also 
to  the  passions  of  your  hearers. 

For  we  give  our  judgments  in  different  ways  under  the  influence  of  pain 
and  of  joy,  of  liking  and  of  hatred.  The  man  who  desires  and  is  hopeful.  .  . 
thinks  that  it  will  be,  and  that  it  will  be  good;  the  man  who  is  indifferent,  or 
who  feels  a  difficulty  thinks  the  opposite.^ 

Here  is  the  alliance  between  the  wish  and  the  thought,  in  pseudo- 
logical  reasoning,  which  is  furnishing  so  much  occupation  to  the 
Freudian  psychologists.^  In  analyzing  pleasure  he  sometimes 
appeals  to  the  evidence  of  the  will  itself,  thus  falling  into  the  cir- 
cular reasoning  pointed  out  in  Chapter  II,  "Everything,  too,  is 
pleasant  of  which  the  desire  exists  in  one ;  for  desire  is  appetite  of 
the  pleasant."  In  general,  it  is  pleasant  to  conform  with  nature; 
hence  to  follow  a  habit,  even  if  it  was  painful  in  the  learning,  is 
pleasant,  "for  an  acquired  habit  comes  to  be  as  a  natural  in- 
stinct, ...  for  '  often  '  and  '  always  '  are  neighbors,  and  nature 
is  concerned  with  the  invariable,  as  habit  with  the  frequent."  He 
also  confirms  the  poet's  saying  that  "every  compulsory  thing  is 
grievous."  On  this  account  "acts  of  attention,  earnest  or  intense 
efforts,  must  be  painful,  for  they  involve  compulsion,  and  force, 
unless  one  is  accustomed  to  them."  This  may  be  a  dictum  that 
labor  is  generally  irksome,  though  among  the  pleasures  enu- 
merated is  the  line  of  Euripides,  "To  spend  one's  time  in  the 
occupation  in  which  one  seems  to  be  at  one's  best."  He  char- 
acterizes pleasures  as  irrational  and  rational;  the  former  referring 
to  the  sensations  of  the  body,  and  the  latter  to  desires  formed  on 

^  Rhetoric,  Book  I,  ch.  xi,  par.  5;  Book  XI,  ch.  i,  par.  4  (Jebb). 

2  Aristotle  discusses,  in  Book  VII  of  the  Nicomachean  Ethics,  the  paradox  of  a 
man  acting  in  opposition  to  his  own  judgment  or  knowledge,  explaining  that  the 
"knowing  better"  is  dormant  at  the  time  of  action  and  does  not  arise  in  conscious- 
ness. Sidgwick  took  up  the  problem  in  an  article  "Unreasonable  Action,"  Mind, 
N.  S.  II,  pp.  174-188  (1893)  and  called  attention  to  the  sophistical  reasonings  by 
which  men  justify  their  momentary  desires.  McDougall  cites  this  latter  article, 
rather  "unreasonably,"  it  seems  to  us,  as  evidence  that  Sidgwick  thought  "rea- 
sonable" action  to  be  the  normal  and  typical  action  of  all  men  (Social  Psychology, 
p.  9).  Apparently  we  are  not  to  suppose  that  men  usually  look  before  they  leap  with- 
out supposing  that  always  they  know  exactly  where  they  will  land,  according  to  the 
anti-intellectual  critics. 


32  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

conviction,  through  imagination,  memory  and  hope.  Other 
pleasures  mentioned  are  love  and  even  mourning,  revenge,  strife, 
honor,  novelty,  learning,  imitation  of  good  works,  flattery  ("since 
everyone  is  selfish")  and  ruling.  The  pains  are  the  "opposites" 
of  these. ^ 

Perhaps  more  fundamental  for  the  theory  of  motives  is  his 
catalogue  of  the  '  Affections,'  —  a  term  much  used  by  the  classical 
psychologists,  and  nearly  synonymous  with  the  other  favorite 
term  '  Passions.'  These  names  comprehend  the  dominating  and 
fairly  universal  motives  to  action,  which,  it  was  always  recog- 
nized, are  often  carried  to  excess.  Aristotle  refers  to  the  affec- 
tions as  "those  things,  being  attended  by  pleasure  or  pain,  by 
which  men  are  altered  in  regard  to  their  judgments,"  this  quality 
constituting  their  importance  for  the  Rhetorician.  He  discusses 
them  in  pairs  of  opposites,  with  the  characteristics  and  causes, 
under  the  following  heads:  anger  and  mildness;  friendship  and 
enmity  or  hatred;  fear  and  boldness;  shame  and  shamelessness ; 
favor  or  gratitude,  and  ingratitude;  pity  and  indignation; 
emulation  and  envy.^ 

There  are  numerous  overlappings  in  these  affections  and  other 
causes  of  pleasures,  as  is  likewise  the  case  in  most  modern  ac- 
counts of  instincts  and  other  interests.  Anger,  he  says,  is  mainly 
due  to  slighting  or  disdain,  either  of  the  subject  or  of  something 
dear  to  him.  Enmity  is  distinguished  from  anger  chiefly  by  the 
length  of  time  it  lasts.  Shame  is  pain  or  trouble  from  prospect  of 
ignominy.  Emulation  is  a  commendable  desire  for  goods  for 
one's  self;  Envy  is  pain  that  another  has  something  good.  We 
shall  bear  this  list  of  affections  in  mind  as  we  examine  the  sug- 
gested list  of  leading  human  motives  put  forward  by  other  writers 
down  to  the  present. 

It  will  be  noticed  that  he  has  not  given  avarice  or  the  desire  for 
wealth  as  one  of  the  affections,  although  he,  in  common  with 
most  other  moralists  of  history,  considered  the  pecuniary  interest 
among  the  most  general  and  powerful  motives  in  human  life.^ 

'  All  these  quotations  are  from  the  Rhetoric,  Book  I,  chs.  x  and  xi  (Jebb). 
2  Ibid.,  Book  II,  chs.  ii-xi. 

^  E.  g.,  Politics  I267bi9  (Book  II,  ch.  vii):  "The  avarice  of  mankind  is  insati- 
able." 


ASSOCIATION  I ST-HEDON  ISM  2^^ 

But  he  was  aware  that  wealth  is  an  '  instrument '  rather  than  a 
primary  good/  though  he  did  not  always  keep  the  distinction 
clearly  in  mind.  In  describing  the  affections,  he  presupposes  the 
desirability  of  wealth,  friends,  power  and  honor.  The  discussions 
illustrate  the  great  difficulty  of  discerning  introspectively  the 
original  wants  or  motives,  and  the  principles  of  their  elaboration, 
especially  if  one  realizes  that  in  many  cases  the  thing  which  was 
originally  desired  as  a  means  comes  to  be  sought  as  an  end  in 
itself. 

Probably  the  space  we  have  devoted  to  Aristotle  is  out  of  pro- 
portion to  his  importance  for  our  present  topic,  either  by  way  of 
excess  or  deficit.  His  doctrine  on  motives,  that  is  to  say,  passed 
to  his  successors  scattered  through  many  pages  of  ambiguous  and 
disconnected  sentences, — the  imperfections  of  exposition  being 
due  more  to  the  conditions  of  transmission,  doubtless,  than  to 
confusion  in  his  thought.  We  have  simply  attempted  to  condense 
and  make  coherent  what  he  had  to  say  on  the  motives  of  mankind 
and  our  version,  based  chiefly  on  the  translations  of  a  few  of  his 
works,  agrees  essentially  with  the  version  of  the  translator  who 
made  a  careful  study  and  analysis  of  the  whole  of  Aristotle's  psy- 
chology. Yet  we  must  recognize  that  the  jumbled  condition  of  his 
writings  must  have  prevented  the  greater  part  of  his  readers  from 
getting  any  definite,  unequivocal  doctrine  from  Aristotle,  and  it 
has  enabled  the  most  diverse  schools  of  thought  to  trace  their 
pedigrees  to  him.  In  particular,  the  self-realization  schools  of 
ethics,  of  which  T.  H.  Green  is  the  most  conspicuous  exponent, 
find  the  source  of  their  anti-hedonist  theories  of  action  in  the 
great  philosopher.  They  doubtless  find  plenty  of  passages  which 
support  them,  especially  those  of  metaphysical  tenor .^  There  is 

'  Rhetoric  Book  I,  ch.  xi:  (In  the  list  of  goods,  along  with  happiness,  health, 
beauty,  etc.)  "Wealth,  again:  —  for  it  is  the  excellence  of  possession,  and  a  thing 
productive  of  many  others."     Cf.  Nic.  Eth.,  Book  VII. 

2  Hammond,  in  his  introduction,  after  developing  Aristotle's  view  of  the  relation 
of  desire  and  reason  in  forming  the  human  will,  says  (p.  Ixxi) :  "In  the  foregoing  I 
have  had  regard  to  the  moral  will.  In  a  general  sense,  however  —  perhaps  akin 
to  Schopenhauer's  conception  —  Aristotle  employs  the  term  energeia  (all  organic 
effort)  as  wiU.  This  form  of  will  or  activity  is,  in  his  teleological  view  of  the  world, 
impulse  to  the  good  or  a  striving  towards  self-realization,  whether  in  plant  or 
animal." 


34  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

no  occasion  here  for  controversy,  even  if  we  were  competent  to 
enter  upon  one.  Our  purpose  has  been  accomplished  in  showing 
that  the  seeds  of  a  naturalist,  sensationalist,  hedonist  account  of 
the  springs  of  action  are  to  be  found  in  the  writings  of  the  man 
whose  authority  up  to  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century 
was  almost  beyond  comparison  in  the  educated  world.  Opposing 
currents  of  philosophy  and  science  caused  the  naturalist  psy- 
chology to  be  ignored  for  ages,  but  the  scattered  sentences  were 
read  by  every  cultured  person  from  Aristotle's  time  —  not  to 
ours,  but  to  the  age  of  the  classical  economists  —  and  the  schol- 
ars in  philosophy,  ethics,  politics  and  the  early  social  sciences 
throughout  those  centuries  had  all  this  material  in  the  back  of 
their  heads.  As  we  shall  see,  they  added  little  to  it  except  system 
and  the  verification  of  their  own  observations. 

Grotius 

From  Aristotle  to  Hobbes  there  were  no  advances,  from  the 
modern  point  of  view,  in  psychology;  but  we  may  Hnger  a  mo- 
ment over  the  work  of  a  seventeenth  century  optimist  (on  the 
questions  of  human  nature),  whose  work  achieved  a  commanding 
prestige  throughout  the  world,  —  Hugo  Grotius.  His  Law  (or 
Rights)  of  War  and  Peace  was  published  in  1625,  m.ore  than  a 
century  after  MachiavelH  wrote  The  Prince.  Grotius  supported 
his  theories  of  international  law  by  a  doctrine  of  the  existence  of 
social  or  benevolent  instincts  in  human  nature,  in  addition  to  the 
commonly  accepted  self -regarding  impulses.  Here  we  find  the 
modern  scientific  spirit  again  invading  the  fields  of  ethical  and 
political  inquiry.  It  looks,  not  particularly  to  divine  revelation, 
nor  to  the  speculations  of  philosophers  as  to  the  effective  power  of 
the  Good,  but  into  the  natural  world,  where  God's  purposes  are 
thought  to  be  revealed  by  his  works,  —  by  the  orderly  and  un- 
capricious  round  of  phenomena.  We  shall  presently  find  a  similar 
spirit  in  Adam  Smith's  ethical  system,  which  represented  a  large 
and  growing  intellectual  movement  in  the  eighteenth  century. 

Grotius  takes  issue  at  once  with  the  philosophers  and  poets 
before  him  who  have  maintained  that: 


ASSOCIATIONIST-HEDONISM  35 

Nature  prompts  all  Men,  and  in  general  All  Animals,  to  seek  their  own 
particular  Advantage;  so  that  either  there  is  no  Justice  at  all,  or  if  there  is 
any,  it  is  extreme  Folly,  because  it  engages  us  to  procure  the  Good  of  others 
to  our  own  Prejudice.* 

No,  says  Grotius;  man  is  indeed  an  animal,  but  one  with  some 
special  traits. 

Now  amongst  the  Things  peculiar  to  Man  is  his  Desire  of  Society,  that  is  a 
certain  IncUnation  to  live  with  those  of  his  own  kind,  not  in  any  Manner 
whatever  but  peacably  and  in  a  Community  regulated  according  to  the  best 
of  his  understanding.  .  .  . 

For  even  of  the  other  Animals  there  are  some  that  forget  a  little  the  Care 
of  their  own  Interests  in  Favor  either  of  their  young  ones  or  those  of  their 
own  kind.  Which  in  my  Opinion  proceeds  from  some  Extrinsick  inteUigent 
Principle  because  they  do  not  show  the  same  Disposition  in  other  Matters 
that  are  not  more  difficult  than  these.  The  same  may  be  said  of  Infants  in 
whom  is  to  be  seen  a  propensity  to  do  Good  to  others  before  they  are  capable 
of  instruction.^ 

This  instinctive  sociability,  he  says,  is  one  real  foundation  of 
right  conduct,  and  of  our  respect  for  the  property  and  privileges  of 
others;  but  he  does  not  despise  the  cementing  force  of  'utility '  in 
the  narrow  egoistic  and  hedonistic  sense. 

By  reason  that  Man  above  all  other  Creatures  is  endued  not  only  with  this 
social  Faculty  of  which  we  have  spoken  but  likewise  with  Judgment  to  dis- 
cern things  pleasant  and  hurtful  and  those  not  only  present  but  future  and 
such  as  may  prove  to  be  so  in  their  Consequences;  it  must  therefore  be  agree- 
able to  human  Nature  that  according  to  the  Nature  of  our  Understanding  we 
should  in  these  Things  follow  the  dictates  of  a  right  and  sound  Judgment  and 
not  be  curbed  either  by  Fear  or  the  Allurements  of  present  Pleasure  nor  be 
carried  away  violently  by  blind  Passion.^ 

Prudence,  therefore,  he  believes  is  a  part  of  natural  right  that  is 
one  of  the  laws  of  our  nature.  Yet  those  who  see  in  social  ar- 
rangements nothing  but  convenience  in  pursuing  selfish  ends  are 
mistaken.  The  old  saw, "  Interest,  that  Spring  of  Just  and  Right," 
is  not  Uterally  true.  It  simply  happens  that  utility  conspires  with 
sociabihty  to  make  society  more  secure. 

The  Mother  of  Natural  Law  is  human  Nature  itself  which  although  even 
the  necessity  of  our  subsistence  should  not  require  it  would  of  itself  create 
in  us  a  mutual  Desire  of  Society  .  .  .  but  to  the  Law  of  Nature  Profit  is 

1  Rights  of  War  and  Peace,  preliminary  discourse,  Sec.  5. 

2  Ibid.,  Sees.  6  and  7.  ^  /jj^.^  Sec.  9. 


36  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

annexed:  for  the  Author  of  Nature  was  pleased  that  every  man  in  particular 
should  be  weak  of  himself  and  not  want  of  many  Things  necessary  for  Hving 
commodiously  to  the  End  that  we  might  more  easily  effect  Society.  .  .  .^ 

In  this  book,  then,  the  theory  of  social  and  kindly  *  propen- 
sities '  or  instincts,  having  no  reference  to  a  quid  pro  quo,  a  theory 
backed  up  by  observations  of  mutual  aid  among  the  lower  ani- 
mals, is  explicitly  applied  to  social  science,  and  the  doctrine  of  the 
providential  reenforcement  of  the  social  instincts  by  harmony 
among  selfish  interests  is  hinted  at.  As  was  intimated  in  Chap- 
ter II,  Grotius'  views  are  perfectly  compatable  with  psychological 
hedonism,  for  a  man's  pleasure  might  well  be  in  unselfish  acts. 
The  position  he  is  attacking  is  that  man  is  naturally  completely 
egoistic,  not  that  he  naturally  seeks  pleasure.  The  natural  tend- 
encies along  both  these  lines  must  be  thoroughly  explored  before 
a  complete  theory  of  motives  is  to  be  obtained. 

HOBBES 

Hobbes'  Leviathan  was  first  published  in  1651,  twenty-six 
years  after  the  great  work  of  Grotius.  In  this  political  treatise  we 
find  a  pessimistic  theory  of  human  nature  —  that  is  to  say  a 
doctrine  of  natural  egoism  —  backed  up  by  a  clean-cut  psy- 
chological analysis  along  hedonist  and  associationist  lines.  It  was 
probably  the  first  improvement,  as  a  modern  student  looks  at  it, 
upon  Aristotle's  psychology;  the  improvement  consisting  in  a 
more  clear  and  unequivocal  exposition,  and  in  the  advances  to- 
ward a  formulation  of  mental  processes  upon  mechanical  or  phys- 
iological principles.  The  book  bears  the  impress  of  three  great 
influences  in  Hobbes'  Ufe,  —  his  classical  learning,  his  acquaint- 
ance with  the  work  of  the  great  early  modern  scientists  (William 
Harvey  and  the  astronomers  of  the  period),  and  the  bloody  Eng- 
lish civil  wars  which  tossed  him  as  a  refugee  back  and  forth  across 
the  Channel.^ 

^  Rights  of  War  and  Peace,  preliminary  discourse,  Sec.  17. 

^  The  tribulations  of  the  RoyaUst  Party  with  which  he  was  affliated  undoubtedly 
added  to  the  sharpness  of  his  sense  of  society's  precariousness  in  the  face  of  human 
selfishness  and  pugnacity;  though  his  psychology  had  been  substantially  formed 
previous  to  the  civU  wars  and  was  pubUshed  in  a  treatise  on  Human  Nature  around 
1630. 


ASSOCIATIONIST-HEDONISM  37 

He  begins  with  a  chapter  on  ''Sense,"  —  or  sensation,  as  we  call 
it.  ''For,"  he  explains  "there  is  no  conception  in  a  man's  mind, 
which  hath  not  at  first,  totally,  or  by  parts,  been  begotten  upon 
the  organs  of  Sense,"  ^  —  which  still  is  a  disputed  point.  The 
cause  of  sense,  briefly,  is  that  an  external  object  presses  upon  the 
organ  of  sense  and  communicates  a  motion  to  the  nerves,  which 
thereupon  carry  the  motion  to  the  brain  and  the  heart,  causing 
there  a  "resistance  or  counter-pressure,  or  endeavor  of  the 
heart  to  deliver  itself." 

In  the  next  chapter  he  treats  of  imagination  or  "  Fancy,"  which 
is  simply  "decaying  sense,"  that  is,  sUght  "motions  within  us 
reliques  of  those  made  in  the  sense  "  (Chs.  II  and  III) .  Memory  is 
based  on  the  same  slight  vibration.  Next  he  treats  of  the  "train 
of  imagination,"  and  states  that  all  association  of  ideas  is  based  on 
the  one  law  of  succession  or  contiguity.  "When  a  man  thinketh 
on  any  thing  whatsoever,"  says  Hobbes,  "His  next  Thought  after, 
is  not  altogether  so  casual  as  it  seems  to  be."  They  always  pro- 
ceed in  the  order  in  which  the  sensations  were  given  (Ch.  Ill) .  He 
distinguishes,  however,  between  those  associations  which  occur  in 
idle  revery,  and  those  in  trains  of  thought  dominated  by  some 
strong  desire.  In  the  latter  case  the  associations  are  directed 
backward  to  a  chain  of  causes  toward  means  of  satisfying  the 
desire.  Here  he  touches  on  a  problem  that  is  still  a  puzzler  for 
psychology,  —  the  "selective  agency"  of  purpose,  in  the  process 
of  directive  thought  or  other  purposive  effort. 

Now  turn  to  his  chapter  on  the  "Passions,"  where  his  explana- 
tion of  the  will  or  voluntary  movement  is  given  (Ch.  VI) .  Some  of 
the  vital  motions,  as  of  the  blood  and  breathing,  require  no  imag- 
ination, he  says;  but  voluntary  movements  do  presuppose  imag- 
ination. There  must  be  a  precedent  thought  of  "whither,  which 
way,  and  what." 

The  small  beginnings  of  motion,  within  the  body  of  man  are  appetites  or 
aversions.  Some  of  them  are  born  with  man;  as  appetite  for  Food  ...  of 
Excretion  and  exoneration  .  .  .  and  some  other  Appetites,  not  many.  The 
rest,  which  are  Appetites  of  particular  things,  proceed  from  experience,  and 
trial  of  their  effects  upon  themselves,  or  other  men.  For  of  things  we  know 
not  at  all,  ...  we  can  have  no  further  Desire,  than  to  taste  and  try  it. 

^  Leviathan,  Ch.  i. 


38  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

Now  any  particular  man  calls  the  object  of  his  appetite  or 
desire  good,  and  the  object  of  his  aversion  had.  The  terms  good 
and  bad  have  no  other  than  personal  meaning,  except  where  there 
are  laws  of  a  Sovereign.  The  ''motion"  of  appetite  is  pleasure,  of 
sense  or  of  mind;  "pleasures  of  the  mind"  come  from  foresight  of 
pleasant  consequences  to  the  senses. 

Now  as  to  the  control  of  the  reason  over  the  passion.  Hobbes' 
chapter  on  the  reason  does  not  help  us  much  in  this  connection, 
as  he  is  trying  to  show  that  the  use  of  syllogisms  is  nothing  but 
addition  and  subtraction,  and  by  the  same  token  liable  to  error, 
which  point  is  made  manifest,  he  thinks,  by  the  reasonings  of  his 
opponents.  The  process  depends  on  the  use  of  speech  and  on 
naming.  He  speaks  elsewhere,  however,  of  the  mental  process  of 
following  forward  a  chain  of  consequences  from  a  given  event, 
according  to  knowledge  already  gained  by  experience.  Concern- 
ing Prudence,  he  says  it  is  identical  with  foresight,  providence,  or 
wisdom,  and  that  it  consists  in  conjecturing  the  future  from  ex- 
perience of  like  chains  of  causes  in  the  past  — 

Though  such  conjecture,  through  the  difi&culty  of  observing  all  circum- 
stances, be  very  fallacious.  But  this  is  certain;  by  how  much  one  man  has 
more  experience  of  things  past,  than  another;  by  so  much  also  he  is  more 
Prudent,  and  his  expectations  seldomer  fail  him  (Ch.  III). 

Prudence  in  imagining  the  causes  which  will  possibly  satisfy  a 
felt  desire  is  common  to  man  and  beast.  "  There  be  beasts,"  says 
he,  "that  at  a  year  old  observe  more,  and  pursue  that  which  is  for 
their  good,  more  prudently,  than  a  child  can  do  at  ten,"  —  so 
little  beUef  had  he  in  instincts,  as  untaught  abilities  to  perform 
complex  acts.  It  is  therefore  the  more  interesting  to  find  him 
saying  that  disinterested  curiosity,  which  leads  a  person  to  ex- 
amine all  possible  effects  of  any  given  event,  apparently  without 
reference  to  his  own  pleasures  and  pains,  seems  to  be  a  purely 
human  characteristic.  "I  have  not  at  any  time  seen  any  signe  "of 
it  except  in  man,  he  says;  it  can  be  "hardly  incident  to  the  nature 
of  any  living  creature  that  has  no  other  Passion  but  sensuall,  such 
as  hunger,  thirst,  lust,  and  anger."  (Ibid.)  His  brief  description 
of  deliberation,  if  compared  with  these  remarks  on  prudence,  will 
give  his  general  views  on  the  relation  of  reason  to  action.  Appe- 


ASSOCIATIONIST-HEDONISM  39 

tites  and  aversions  concerning  a  proposed  act  will  arise  in  rapid 
alternation  in  one's  mind,  according  as  good  or  evil  consequences 
are  discerned.  This  process  of  deKberation  continues  until  some 
one  appetite  finally  passes  into  overt  action  and  becomes  the 
will  (Ch.  VI). 

The  last  point  for  us  to  notice  is  his  estimate  of  the  prevailing 
passions  or  leading  motives  in  human  nature  generally.  He 
catalogues  a  long  string  of  passions,  each  compounded  on  the 
preceding  appetitive  entities.  For  instance,  "displeasures,  are 
some  in  the  sense,  and  called  Payne;  others,  in  the  Expectation  of 
consequences,  and  are  called  Griefe." 

Griefe,  for  the  successe  of  a  Competitor  in  wealth,  honour,  or  other  good, 
if  it  be  joyned  with  endeavour  to  enforce  our  own  abihties  to  equall  or  ex- 
cede  him,  is  called  Emulation:  But  joyned  with  Endeavor  to  supplant,  or 
hinder  a  Competitor,  Envie.     {Ibid.) 

The  list  of  passions  contains  such  diverse  names  as  courage, 
anger,  diffidence,  benevolence,  good  nature,  covetousness,  am- 
bition, Uberality,  miserableness  and  many  others ;  passive  states  of 
mind  and  active  desires  being  confused  as  in  Aristotle's  list. 

Although  most  of  his  passions  are  egoistic,  we  notice  some  ex- 
ceptions: benevolence,  magnanimity,  kindness,  one  species  of 
love,  and  especially  curiosity.  The  latter  is  "a  lust  of  the  mind, 
that  by  a  perseverance  of  delight  in  the  continuall  and  inde- 
fatigable generation  of  Knowledge,  exceedeth  the  short  ve- 
hemence of  any  carnall  Pleasure." 

In  his  well-known  chapter  on  "The  Natural  Condition  of  Man- 
kind," he  asserts  again,  as  he  has  in  his  introduction,  that  men  are 
all  very  much  alike  as  to  abiUty  and  passions,  and  alike  are  they 
all  conceited.  Mentally  they  are  still  more  equal  than  physically; 
and  the  weakest  can  by  machination  kill  or  rob  the  strongest. 
"So  that  in  the  Nature  of  Man,  we  find  three  principall  causes  of 
quarrell.  First,  Competition;  secondly.  Diffidence;  thirdly. 
Glory.  The  first  maketh  men  invade  for  gain;  the  second  for 
Safety ;  and  the  third  for  Reputation ' '  {Ihid. ,  Ch.  XIII) .  ' '  Com- 
petition," it  seems,  is  the  acquired  desire  for  material  goods  or 
means  of  enjoyment  of  the  senses.  The  state,  or  organized  social 
power  —  the  sovereign  —  is  made  possible  partly  by  the  passions 


40  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

themselves,  and  partly  by  the  reason.  The  passions  which  incline 
men  to  peace,  in  the  state  of  nature,  are  fear  of  death  and  desire  of 
enjoyment  of  wealth;  reason  shows  them  they  can  combine 
mutually  to  limit  one  another's  liberties.  The  passions  leading  to 
crime,  he  says  elsewhere,  are  especially  Hate,  Lust,  Ambition  and 
Covetousness.  They  are  so  strong  that  they  can  hardly  be  re- 
strained by  reason,  and  the  constant  exercise  of  severe  punish- 
ments is  required  to  keep  them  in  check  (Ch.  XXVII).  In  a 
comparison  of  animal  and  human  societies,  possibly  suggested  by 
Grotius  or  Aristotle,  he  says  that  many  of  the  lower  creatures  get 
on  amicably  in  societies  without  any  sovereign  to  overawe  them, 
because  they  are  lacking  in  individual  conceit,  and  so  their  private 
interests  are  naturally  harmonious.^ 

Now  Hobbes,  to  be  sure,  is  out  of  date, — nearly  three  hundred 
years.  His  psychology  is  of  little  use  to  us  directly  except  for  his 
observations  on  the  dominant  motives  of  the  general  run  of  men, 
which  are  doubtless  to  be  taken  with  some  reserve.  (It  is  doubt- 
ful if  he  would  greatly  change  his  mind  if  he  could  return  now  and 
learn  all  that  we  have  to  offer  him;  but  facts,  apparently,  are  in- 
terpreted differently  by  different  men,  partly  by  reason  of  varying 

1  It  is  true  that  certain  living  creatures,  as  Bees,  and  Ants,  live  sociably  one  with 
another  (which  are  therefore  by  Aristotle  numbered  amongst  Politicall  creatures); 
and  yet  have  no  other  direction,  than  their  particular  judgments  and  appetites;  nor 
speech,  whereby  one  of  them  can  signifie  to  another,  what  he  thinks  expedient  for 
the  common  benefit:  and  therefore  some  man  may  perhaps  desire  to  know,  why 
Man-kind  cannot  do  the  same.  To  which  I  answer, 

First,  that  men  are  continually  in  competition  for  Honour  and  Dignity,  which 
these  creatures  are  not;  and  consequently  amongst  men  there  ariseth  on  that 
ground.  Envy  and  Hatred,  and  finally  Warre;  but  amongst  these  not  so. 

Secondly,  that  amongst  these  creatures,  the  Common  good  differeth  not  from 
the  Private;  and  being  by  nature  inclined  to  their  private,  they  procure  thereby  the 
common  benefit.  But  man,  whose  Joy  consisteth  in  comparing  himself e  with  other 
men,  can  relish  nothing  but  what  is  eminent. 

Thirdly,  that  these  creatures,  having  not  (as  man)  the  use  of  reason,  do  not  see, 
nor  think  they  see  any  fault,  in  the  administration  of  their  common  businesse: 
whereas  amongst  men,  there  are  very  many,  that  thinke  themselves  wiser,  and  abler 
to  govern  the  Publique,  better  than  the  rest;  and  these  strive  to  reforme  and  in- 
novate, one  this  way,  another  that  way;  and  thereby  bringeth  into  Distraction  and 
Civill  warre. 

Fourthly,  that  these  creatures,  .  .  .  want  that  art  of  words,  by  which  some  men 
can  represent  to  others,  that  which  is  Good,  in  the  likenesse  of  evill;  .  .  .  Ch. 
XVII. 


ASSOCIATIONIST-EEDONISM  4I 

innate  intellectual  mechanisms.)  His  system  was  studied  as- 
siduously, however,  by  a  line  of  philosophers  including  the  associa- 
tion psychologists  of  the  early  nineteenth  century.  James  Mill 
was  thoroughly  familiar  with  Hobbes'  work.  Utilitarianism  owed 
much  to  the  latter  in  several  directions,  as  the  major  premise  of  his 
political  arguments  was  the  paramount  good  of  a  maximum  ful- 
fillment of  human  desires.  But  one  of  the  most  significant  features 
of  his  teachings,  so  far  as  we  are  concerned,  is  that  while  he  re- 
duced all  motives  ultimately  to  egoistic  pleasures  of  sense  (or  pur- 
ported to),  he  had  to  recognize  some  powerful  universal  passions 
such  as  curiosity,  benevolence,  anger  and  the  desire  for  honor, 
which  would  certainly  have  given  him  considerable  difficulty  had 
he  tried  to  distinguish  the  elementary  sensations  involved. 

Connections  with  Epistemological  Controversies 

Inquiry  into  the  psychological  hedonism  of  the  utilitarians  and 
classical  economists  also  takes  us  dangerously  near  the  epistemo- 
logical and  ethical  controversies  centering  around  the  works 
of  Descartes,  Locke,  Hume  and  Kant,  —  to  go  no  further.  We 
must  avoid  this  labyrinth,  but  it  cannot  escape  our  notice  that  the 
'  innate  ideas,'  '  intuition,'  and  '  categorical  imperatives  '  —  all 
psychological  hypotheses  formulated  in  the  service  of  morality 
and  the  belief  in  the  external  world  —  are  of  the  same  lineal  stock 
as  our  modern  theories  of  instinct.  The  teachings  of  Locke, 
Berkeley  and  Hume,  directed  against  the  innate  idea  doctrine, 
culminated,  it  will  be  remembered,  in  Hume's  assertion  that  all 
our  knowledge  and  belief  is  derived  from  our  sensations  according 
to  their  psychological,  not  logical,  associations.  Psychological 
associations  is  a  matter  of  temporal  contiguity,  which,  as  Locke 
has  shown,  may  be  a  very  hit  or  miss  order  and  not  related  to 
eternal  or  physical  necessity  at  all.  There  was  no  assurance  of 
a  real  world  back  of  our  sensations,  our  variable  beliefs  are 
simply  generated  by  individual  experiences  and  associations  of 
sensations.  There  is,  accordingly,  no  rational  and  external  basis  of 
morals,  but  only  the  pleasant  feeling  which  men  in  general  ex- 
perience at  the  sight  of  virtuous  acts.^ 

^  David  Hume,  Treaties  of  Human  Nature,  Bk.  HI,  pt.  i,  sec.  2  (1740). 


42  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

This  scepticism  stirred  Kant  on  the  Continent  and  Reid  in  Scot- 
land to  substantiate  the  real  world  and  the  eternal  character  of 
moraUty  by  the  hypothesis  of  '  intuitions,'  or  inborn  knowledge 
or  beliefs  which  supplement  the  impressions  we  derive  from  our 
senses.  These  intuitions,  they  taught,  give  us  authoritative  evi- 
dence of  the  existence  of  real  objects,  of  God,  of  right  and  wrong, 
etc.  They  differ  from  instincts  in  the  modern  sense  as  knowledge 
of  real  things  differs  from  mere  feeling  or  from  the  capacity  for 
action  of  a  certain  kind,  in  a  species  of  animals.  Hume  had 
noticed  the  domestic  instincts  in  treating  of  the  '  passions,'  but  he 
considered  that  they  proved  nothing  about  real  existence.  Now 
both  Hume  and  Dugald  Stewart,  the  follower  of  Reid,  were  close 
friends  of  Adam  Smith,  and  James  Mill  acknowledged  both  as  his 
masters  in  certain  respects. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  ABXM  SMITH 

Hints  in  Wealth  of  Nations 

With  the  foregoing  attempts  at  orientation,  we  take  up  the  psy- 
chology of  Adam  Smith,  as  it  concerns  human  motives.  There  are 
various  hints  of  it  in  the  Wealth  of  Nations,  but  it  is  to  be  found  in 
fuller  and  more  explicit  form  in  his  earlier  ethical  treatise,  the 
Theory  of  Moral  Sentiments  (1759).  In  the  Wealth  of  Nations,  as 
is  well  known,  he  assumes  the  general  prevalence  of  economic 
*  self-interest,'  or,  as  we  might  express  it, '  pecuniary  egoism,'  —  a 
general  inclination  in  all  men  to  drive  as  good  a  business  bargain 
for  themselves  as  possible.  The  suggestion  has  been  made  that  he 
was  unduly  influenced  by  the  peculiar  traits  of  his  own  people, 
that  he  assumed  "there  was  a  Scotchman  inside  every  man." 
Certainly  he  considered  the  spirit  of  accumulation  to  be  a 
strongly-marked  human  character,  and  doubtless  he  took  for 
granted  some  '  rationality  '  in  the  pursuit  of  it.  The  desire  of 
nearly  every  man  for  wealth  is  boimdless,  he  intimated,  for 
though  the  stomach  is  soon  filled,  the  "passion  for  ostentation" 
seems  to  be  without  limit. ^  He  recognizes  non-utilitarian  forces  in 
industry,  however,  such  as  the  instinct  or  "propensity"  to  truck 
and  barter  -  and  there  are  expressions  hinting  that  sa\dng  is  a 
quasi-automatic  process,  most  people  preferring  future  and  more 
abundant  enjoyments  to  present  scanty  pleasures.^   He  repeats 

^  Wealth  of  Nations,  Bk.  I,  ch.  ii,  pt.  2  (Vol.  I,  p.  165  of  Cannan's  edition). 

2  Ibid.,  Bk.  I,  ch.  ii.  The  substance  of  this  passage  is  also  in  his  original  Lectures, 
p.  169  (cited  by  Veblen,  Quar.  Jour.  Econ.,  Vol.  XTH,  p.  399). 

^  With  regard  to  profusion,  the  principle  which  prompts  to  expense  is  the  passion 
for  present  enjojinent;  which,  though  sometimes  \-iolent  and  very  difficult  to  be  re- 
strained, is  in  general  only  momentary  and  occasional.  But  the  principle  which 
prompts  to  save  is  the  desire  of  bettering  our  condition,  a  desire  which,  though 
generally  calm  and  dispassionate,  comes  with  us  from  the  womb  and  never  leaves  us 
imtil  we  go  into  the  grave.  In  the  whole  interval  which  separates  those  two  mo- 
ments, there  is  scarce  perhaps  a  single  instant  in  which  any  man  is  so  perfectly  and 


44  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

his  emphasis  on  the  urgency  of  the  saving  impulses  by  saying  that 
they  bring  constantly  increasing  national  opulence,  in  spite  of  the 
worst  governmental  extravagance.  "Like  the  unknown  principle 
of  animal  life,  it  frequently  restores  health  and  vigor  to  the  con- 
stitution, in  spite,  not  only  of  the  disease,  but  of  the  absurd  pre- 
scriptions of  the  doctor."  ^ 

Theory  of  Moral  Sentiments 

Now  let  us  see  how  these  psychological  views  of  "propensities" 
and  "self-interest"  are  fitted  together  in  his  Moral  Sentiments, 
into  an  ethical  system.  Then  we  can  consider  the  parts  which 
have  special  economic  significance. 

It  becomes  clear  in  the  first  two  chapters  that  Adam  Smith  be- 
lieves in  non-egoistic  instincts,  for  he  vigorously  combats  the  idea 
that  the  "principle"  of  sympathy  is  a  "refinement  of  self-love." 
The  pleasures  of  sympathy  are  so  instantaneous,  and  are  shown 
on  such  frivolous  occasions,  that  it  is  absurd  to  account  for  the 
phenomena  by  assuming  manifold  calculations  of  self-interest. 
He  cites  the  pleasure  of  getting  a  laugh  from  the  company  at  one's 
joke,  and  of  reading  to  a  friend  a  poem  which  one  has  found  espe- 
cially enjoyable.^  Consequently,  however  selfish  a  man  may  be, 
he  is  not  without  disinterested  sympathy,  or  capacity  to  feel  some 
stirrings  of  the  same  emotions  which  he  perceives  another  person 
to  be  experiencing.  There  is,  in  this  treatise,  little  explicit  theory 
as  to  sensation,  ideas  and  associations;  doubtless  he  considered 
that  his  friend  Hume  had  sufficiently  attended  to  them,  and  he 
was  interested  only  in  tracing  the  interweavings  of  the  original 
traits  or  passions  of  human  nature  in  the  production  of  the  '  moral 
sense.'  He  did  not  consider  moral  judgments  to  be  intuitive  and 

completely  satisfied  with  his  situation  as  to  be  without  any  wish  of  alteration  or  im- 
provement of  any  kind.  An  augmentation  of  fortune  is  the  means  by  which  the 
greater  part  of  man  propose  and  wish  to  better  their  condition.  —  Ibid.,  Bk.  II, 
ch.  iii  (Vol.  I,  p.  323,  Cannan's  ed.). 

1  Wealth  of  Nations  (Cannan's  ed.),  Vol.  I,  p.  325.  In  the  Moral  Sentiments, 
however,  he  asserts  that  a  pleasure  which  is  to  come  ten  years  hence  attracts  us 
very  little  in  comparison  with  one  of  today;  and  the  need  of  acquiring  prudence 
and  self-command  over  the  natural  immediate  passions  runs  all  through  this  earlier 
work  (see  Pt.  IV,  ch.  ii,  p.  329  of  the  edition  of  1812). 

^   Theory  of  Moral  Sentiments,  Pt.  I,  sec.  i,  ch.  ii. 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  ADAM  SMITH  45 

unanalyzable  but  to  be  the  resultant  of  various  instinctive  pro- 
clivities such  as  sympathy,  resentment  and  gratitude. 

The  principle  or  instinct  of  sympathy,  according  to  Smith,  does 
not  prompt  the  agent  to  any  special  course  of  action  upon  the 
presentation  of  a  certain  external  situation  (as  is  the  case  with  the 
food-getting  instincts,  for  instance),  but  it  causes  every  human 
being,  when  he  is  in  the  presence  of  another  person  who  is  ex- 
periencing an  emotional  reaction  to  some  particular  object,  to 
feel  a  lesser  degree  of  that  same  emotion.  The  judgment  of  the 
impartial  spectator  as  to  what  expression  of  the  other's  passion  is 
fitting  to  the  occasion,  is  the  natural  judgment  of  the  "propriety" 
of  any  action.  He  thinks  we  are  all  somewhat  egoistic  and  prone 
to  overestimate  our  fortunes  and  misfortunes,  so  that  the  by- 
stander who  apprehends  our  situation  sympathetically,  but  yet 
does  not  experience  the  full  degree  of  our  passions,  is  able  to  give 
a  more  accurate  account  of  the  merits  of  the  case  than  ourselves. 

In  another  preliminary  section  he  discusses  the  passions  under 
the  following  heads :  those  originating  in  the  body,  those  originat- 
ing "from  a  particular  turn  or  habit  of  the  imagination,"  unsocial, 
social,  and  selfish  passions.^  The  bodily  passions  are  obvious;  the 
"peculiar  turn  of  the  imagination"  is  an  individual  attachment 
such  as  the  love  of  a  particular  person.  The  unsocial  passions  are 
hatred  and  resentment;  these  are,  however,  "necessary  parts  of 
the  character  of  human  nature,"  and  are  sympathized  with  in 
appropriate  circumstances.  The  social  passions  are  generosity, 
humanity,  kindness,  mutual  friendship  and  esteem;  these  are 
always  pleasing  to  the  spectator  for  he  can  sympathize  both  with 
the  subject  and  with  the  object  of  them.  Probably  he  meant  to  in- 
clude gratitude  in  this  latter  category,  as  he  later  assigns  it  an 
important  place  in  the  moral  sentiments.  The  selfish  passions  are 
in  between  the  social  and  unsocial.  These  are  "grief  and  joy  on 
account  of  our  own  private  good  and  bad  fortune,"  —  that  is,  the 
pain  which  comes  from  frustration  of  our  passions,  or  the  pleasure 
of  their  fulfillment.  It  would  appear  that  he  considered  most  of 
these  passions  innate  endowments  of  hiunan  nature,  though  we 
cannot  be  quite  sure  as  to  what  his  list  of  such  indivisible  traits 
1  Theory  of  Moral  Sentiments,  Pt.  I,  sec.  2,  chs.  i-v. 


4-6  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

would  have  been.  A  particular  attachment  could  hardly  be  such 
a  trait,  and  to  say  that  it  is  common  to  all  men  to  form  particular 
attachments  does  not  enlighten  us  much  unless  common  features 
of  these  attachments  can  be  discerned. 

Propriety,  then,  is  the  degree  of  any  passion  or  emotion  which  a 
bystander  knowing  the  circumstances  entirely  sympathizes  with. 
It  is  the  affection  which  is  properly  proportioned  to  its  provoca- 
tion. Now  comes  a  discussion  of  merit  and  demerit,  which  is  con- 
cerned with  the  action  taken  by  the  person  feeling  the  original 
passion  on  account  of  its  excitement,  and  is  concerned  further 
with  the  consequences  of  that  action  (Pt.  III).  Adam  Smith 
further  believes  that  the  motives  to  an  action,  including  the  in- 
tention of  the  agent,  are  the  only  things  to  be  considered  in  form- 
ing a  moral  judgment  on  the  whole  act.  Practically,  he  admits, 
the  consequences  have  also  to  be  considered,  on  account  of  our 
prejudices,  and  these  prejudices  are  even  providentially  arranged, 
since  moral  judgments  which  take  accoimt  of  consequences  teach 
people  to  be  careful.  The  judgment  of  merit  and  demerit  is  based 
upon  the  sympathy  of  the  impartial  and  informed  bystander,  with 
the  passions  both  of  the  agent  and  of  the  person  toward  whom  his 
reaction  is  directed.  The  judgment  of  merit  or  benevolence  is 
sympathetic  participation  in  the  gratitude  of  the  person  toward 
whom  the  agent  does  a  good  turn;  the  judgment  of  demerit  is 
sympathy  with  the  instinctive  resentment  of  a  person  who  is  in- 
jured. These  two  instincts  make  social  life  possible  among  primi- 
tive men,  for  resentment  places  an  automatic  check  upon  injuries, 
and  the  sympathetic  appraisal  of  such  resentment  by  people  not 
directly  affected  moderates  resentment  into  real  justice.  Merit 
and  demerit  imply  rewards  and  punishments,  which  are  approved 
and  perhaps  conferred  by  the  onlookers  collectively;  whereas  the 
propriety  of  behavior  as  exhibiting  feeling  is  reflected  only  by  the 
private  attitude  of  approval  or  disapproval  of  members  of  the 
social  group. 

The  individual's  sense  of  private  duty,  that  is  his  moral  sense  or 
conscience  is  next  discussed,  and  is  found  to  proceed  from  the 
human  capacity  for  impartial  sympathy  with  the  acts  and  feelings 
of  other  people. 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  ADAM  SMITH  47 

We  either  approve  or  disapprove  of  our  conduct,  according  as  we  feel  that, 
when  we  place  ourselves  in  the  situation  of  another  man  and  view  it,  as  it 
were,  from  his  station,  we  either  can  or  cannot  entirely  enter  into  and  sym- 
pathize with  the  sentiments  and  motives  which  influenced  it.^ 

No  such  sense  of  duty  would  exist  in  an  individual  who  should 
live  his  whole  life  in  complete  solitude,  any  more  than  a  sense  of 
human  beauty  would  be  possible.  (The  esthetic  and  moral  na- 
tures are  very  closely  connected,  according  to  Smith.) 

But  bring  him  into  society,  and  all  his  own  passions  will  immediately  be- 
come the  causes  of  new  passions.  He  will  observe  that  mankind  approve  of 
some  of  them,  and  are  disgusted  by  others.  He  will  be  elevated  in  the  one 
case  and  cast  down  in  the  other.  .  .  .     (Ibid.) 

Hence,  experience  with  the  way  our  own  sympathies  deal  with 
the  feelings  and  acts  of  other  people,  and  our  observations  as  to 
how  our  own  conduct  is  reflected  in  the  attitudes  of  our  neighbors, 
build  up  the  *'man  within  the  breast,"  or  conscience,  who  sees  our- 
selves very  much  as  others  see  us;  who  takes  an  objective  view  of 
the  situation  leading  to  action  and  thus  is  able  to  dominate  our 
passions  from  consideration  of  ulterior  effects.  In  some  passages 
marked  by  his  characteristic  noble  eloquence,  he  describes  the 
struggles  of  conscience  with  "self-love,"  when  one's  private  good 
is  opposed  to  the  greater  good  of  others.  Conscience  is  supreme 
"in  the  generous  upon  all  occasions,  in  the  mean  upon  many,"  he 
says;  and 

.  .  .  the  man  within  calls  to  us,  with  a  voice  capable  of  astonishing  the 
most  presumptuous  of  our  passions,  that  we  are  but  one  of  the  multitude,  in 
no  respect  better  than  any  other  in  it ;  and  that  when  we  prefer  ourselves  so 
shamefully  and  blindly  to  others,  we  become  the  proper  objects  of  resent- 
ment, abhorrence,  and  execration.^ 

He  sometimes  speaks  of  the  "man  within,"  or  conscience,  as 
synonymous  with  the  reason. 

More  Especially  Economic  Psychology 

So  much  for  the  outlines  of  Smith's  moral  system.  We  can  now 
collect  some  scattered  but  economically  significant  psychological 
doctrines  from  the  work  without  great  danger  of  misrepresenting 
his  larger  meanings. 

^  Theory  of  Moral  Sentiments,  Pt.  Ill,  ch.  i,  p.  189. 
2  Ibid.,  Pt.  Ill,  ch.  iii,  p.  230. 


48  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

In  the  first  place,  we  cannot  but  notice  the  frequency  with 
which  he  argues  against  the  contention  that  morality  is  based 
upon  human  perceptions  of  utility.  He  has  devoted  three  whole 
chapters  to  such  refutations,  besides  numerous  smaller  passages 
throughout  the  book.  We  have  seen  that  he  denied  this  explana- 
tion of  the  facts  of  S5mipathy.  Morality  is  indeed  useful  for  the 
preservation  of  society,  he  admits,  and  our  personal  welfare  is  of 
course  bound  up  with  the  survival  of  the  whole  group;  but  men 
practically  never  reflect  upon  this  fact  of  social  utility  or  solidar- 
ity when  they  spontaneously  condemn  immoral  practices  (Pt.  II, 
sec.  2,  ch.  iii).  It  simply  happens  that  the  direct  and  often  selfish 
human  impulses  were  arranged  by  that  Great  Watch-maker, 
Nature,  so  that  the  general  effect  of  the  actions  they  lead  to  is  the 
preservation  of  society.  Of  the  many  allusions  to  the  beneficent 
Order  of  Nature  the  following  may  be  found  typical: 

The  economy  of  nature  is  in  this  respect  exactly  of  a  piece  with  what  it  is 
upon  many  other  occasions.  .  .  .  Thus  self-preservation,  and  the  propaga- 
tion of  the  species,  are  the  great  ends  which  Nature  seems  to  have  proposed 
in  the  formation  of  all  animals.  ...  But  though  we  are  in  this  manner  en- 
dowed with  a  very  strong  desire  to  those  ends,  it  has  not  been  entrusted  to 
the  slow  and  uncertain  determinations  of  our  reason,  to  find  out  the  proper 
means  of  bringing  them  about.  Nature  has  directed  us  to  the  greater  part 
of  these  by  original  and  immediate  instincts.  Hunger,  thirst,  the  passion 
which  unites  the  two  sexes,  the  love  of  pleasure  and  the  dread  of  pain, 
prompt  us  to  apply  those  means  for  their  own  sakes;  and  without  any  con- 
sideration of  their  tendency  to  those  beneficent  ends  which  the  great  Director 
of  nature  intended  to  produce  by  them.^ 

Here  is  quite  a  modern  view  of  the  nature  of  instinct,  and  it  is 
perfectly  clear  that  he  considered  the  moral  sense  based  on  some 
such  unforeseeing  propensities. 

Recognition  of  other  innate  and  non-utilitarian  bents  comes  out 
in  several  places.  In  combating  the  idea  that  associations  of  nar- 
row "utilities"  determine  all  our  tastes  or  esthetic  appreciations, 
he  observes  that  those  men  who  have  the  strongest  desire  for 
accurate  watches  or  for  many  pockets  in  their  clothes  are  not 
usually  more  punctual  nor  more  conveniently  equipped  than  are 
other  people;  also  that  statesmen  almost  never  consider  systems  of 
government  simply  in  relation  to  their  effects  upon  the  happiness 
1  Theory  of  Moral  Sentiments,  Pt.  II,  sec.  i,  ch.  v,  note. 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  ADAM  SMITH  49 

of  the  people.  "From  a  certain  love  of  art  and  contrivance  we 
sometimes  seem  to  value  the  means  more  than  the  end,"  and  in 
general,  if  you  want  to  stimulate  a  lazy  man  to  industry  or  a  pub- 
lic official  to  improvement  of  his  system  of  government,  do  not 
speak  to  either  one  of  the  ultimate  substantial  comforts,  or  con- 
sumers' utihties  which  these  reforms  will  secure.  Speak  to  the  one 
rather  of  the  magnificent  array  of  useless  equipages,  houses,  serv- 
ants, clothes  and  so  on  which  he  can  get  as  the  reward  of  his 
labors;  and  to  the  other  of  the  beautiful  system  or  machine  of 
curiously  contrived,  interconnecting  political  agencies  which  he 
will  thereby  have  to  manage    (Pt.  IV,  ch.  i). 

The  sense  of  duty,  moreover,  is  made  up  in  considerable  meas- 
ure, as  the  reader  must  have  noticed  from  our  account  of  it,  of 
the  instinctive  desire  for  the  approval  of  one's  fellows. 

Nature,  says  Smith,  when  she  formed  man  for  society,  endowed  him  with 
an  original  desire  to  please,  and  an  original  aversion  to  offend,  his  brethren. 
The  All-wise  Author  of  Nature  has,  in  this  manner,  taught  man  to  respect  the 
sentiments  and  judgments  of  his  brethren.  .  .  .  He  has  made  man,  if  I  may 
say  so,  the  immediate  judge  of  mankind  .  .  .  and  appointed  him  his  vice- 
regent  upon  earth,  to  superintend  the  behaviour  of  his  brethren  (Pt.  Ill,  ch.  ii, 
pp.  200,  219). 

Though  we  must  notice  that  he  contends  against  the  notion 
that  this  desire  for  other  peoples'  approval  is  the  whole  of  the 
sense  of  duty. 

Emphasis  on  Desire  for  Distinction 

Another  universal  human  disposition  which  Adam  Smith  con- 
stantly dwells  upon,  is  the  craving  for  social  distinction;  and  he 
expatiates  on  the  common  pursuit  of  it  through  ostentatious 
luxury.  Possibly  this  proclivity  should  be  reduced  to  the  same 
psychological  elements  as  the  love  of  praise  which  he  has  men- 
tioned in  connection  with  the  moral  sense;  but  Smith  attributes 
the  desire  for  social  distinction  to  a  peculiar  quality  of  original 
s)anpathy,  — that  we  sympathize  with,  and  give  attention  to,  the 
(real  or  supposed)  small  joys  of  our  neighbors  to  a  much  greater 
degree  than  their  slight  sorrows. 

That  he  considers  social  ambition  (however  it  may  be  accounted 
for)  the  main  spring  of  economic  activity  —  and  of  political 


50  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

activity  too,  it  would  seem  —  is  made  evident  in  very  many  pas- 
sages ;  and  he  recognizes  the  "corruption  of  the  moral  sentiments " 
which  this  force  frequently  causes.  A  section  containing  several 
chapters  is  devoted  to  the  "effects  of  prosperity  and  adversity 
upon  the  judgments  of  mankind  with  regard  to  the  propriety  of 
action";  and  there  we  read: 

To  what  purpose  is  all  the  toil  and  bustle  of  this  world?  What  is  the  end  of 
avarice  and  ambition,  of  the  pursuit  of  wealth,  of  p>ower,  of  preheminence? 
Is  it  to  supply  the  necessities  of  nature?  The  wages  of  the  meanest  laborer 
can  supply  them.  ...  If  we  examine  his  economy  with  rigor,  we  shall  find 
that  he  spends  a  great  part  of  them  upon  conveniences,  which  may  be  re- 
garded as  superfluities,  and  that,  upon  extraordinary  occasions  he  can  give 
something  even  to  vanity  and  distinction. 

Is  the  fare  and  shelter  of  the  rich  so  much  better  than  that  of 
the  rest  of  us?  If  we  reflect,  we  know  it  is  not. 

From  whence,  then,  arises  that  emulation  which  runs  through  all  the  dif- 
ferent ranks  of  men,  and  what  are  the  advantages  which  we  propose  by  that 
great  purpose  of  human  life  which  we  call  bettering  our  condition?  To  be 
observed,  to  be  attended  to,  to  be  taken  notice  of  with  sympathy,  com- 
placency, and  approbation,  are  all  the  advantages  which  we  can  propose 
to  derive  from  it.  It  is  the  vanity,  not  the  ease,  or  the  pleasure,  which  in- 
terests us. 

Perhaps  the  clearest  expression  of  this  view  is  in  the  following 
sentences: 

And  thus,  place,  that  great  object  which  divides  the  wives  of  aldermen,  is 
the  end  of  half  the  labors  of  human  life;  .  .  .  People  of  sense,  it  is  said,  in- 
deed despise  place;  .  .  ,  But  rank,  distinction,  preheminence,  no  man 
despises,  unless  he  is  either  raised  very  much  above,  or  sunk  very  much 
below,  the  ordinary  standard  of  human  nature.^ 

In  the  chapter  mentioned  above,  in  which  he  speaks  of  the  in- 
nate love  of  system  or  of  certain  means  without  regard  to  the  ends 
they  serve,  he  asserts  that  this  desire  for  intricate  systems  of  ma- 
terial things  is  one  of  the  strongest  economic  motives,  more  potent 
in  fact  than  the  ultimate  utilities  of  sense.  Whatever  satisfactions 
there  are  to  be  derived  from  wealth  are  usually  overestimated  in 
the  pursuing  of  it,  he  thinks,  and  this  self-deception  is  a  fortunate 
circumstance  for  society  at  large.   To  no  purpose  does  the  land- 

1  Theory  of  Moral  Sentiments,  Pt.  I,  sec.  3,  ch.  ii,  pp.  81,  92. 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  ADAM  SMITH  5 1 

lord  survey  his  broad  acres,  and  in  imagination  consume  all  the 
produce  thereof,  for  the  produce  will  inevitably  chiefly  feed  other 
people  in  whom  he  has  no  interest.  Then  follows  a  passage  on  the 
"invisible  hand,"  which  has  made  self-interest  promote  public 
interest,  in  language  almost  identical  with  the  passage  so  often 
quoted  from  the  Wealth  of  Nations  (Pt.  IV,  ch.  i,  pp.  317-318). 
It  fortunately  happens,  he  says,  that  in  the  lower  and  middle 
classes  the  roads  to  fortune  and  to  virtue  are  very  nearly  the 
same,  —  honesty,  sobriety,  intelligence  and  industry  are  the 
requisites  for  getting  that  accumulation  of  wealth  which  is  de- 
sired on  account  of  its  social  prestige.  In  the  higher  ranks,  un- 
happily, the  conduct  securing  distinction  is  not  so  often  the  same 
as  that  exhibiting  virtue. 

In  equal  degrees  of  merit  there  is  scarce  any  man  who  does  not  respect 
more  the  rich  and  the  great,  than  the  poor  and  humble.  With  most  men  the 
presumption  and  vanity  of  the  former  are  much  more  admired  than  the  real 
and  solid  merit  of  the  latter  (Pt.  I,  sec.  3,  ch.  iii,  pp.  100,  102). 

Two  interesting  chapters  are  on  the  "Influence  of  Custom  and 
Fashion  upon  the  Sentiments  of  Moral  Approval  and  Disap- 
proval." He  considers,  as  has  been  said,  the  sense  of  beauty  and 
the  sense  of  right  conduct  to  be  closely  related.  The  former,  he 
shows  by  abundant  illustrations,  is  highly  conventionalized,  not 
only  with  respect  to  such  matters  as  dress,  but  with  regard  to 
esthetic  standards  in  the  fine  arts.  He  points  out  further  that 
moral  sentiments  vary  considerably  in  different  times  and  places, 
although  he  thinks  the  major  vices  are  everywhere  considered  re- 
volting (Pt.  V,  chs.  i  and  ii).  He  cites  the  differences  between  the 
virtues  of  the  followers  of  Charles  the  Second  and  those  of  the 
Puritans,  and  the  divergent  views  on  infanticide  in  ancient  and 
modern  times,  as  samples  of  such  fortuitous  warpings  of  moral 
judgments  by  custom. 

It  must  be  evident  from  the  foregoing  that  a  considerable  part 
of  the  '  theory  of  the  leisure  class  '  is  to  be  gathered  from  a  reading 
of  Adam  Smith's  Moral  Sentiments. 

Another  interesting  chapter  is  "On  the  Nature  of  Self -Deceit, 
and  the  Origin  and  Use  of  General  Rules."  The  man  in  the 
breast,  he  says,  is  unfortunately  not  always  able  to  take  a  really 


52  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

impartial  view  of  one's  own  situation.  Frequently  our  desire  is  so 
strong  as  to  corrupt  our  judgment. 

The  passions,  upon  this  account,  as  Father  Malebranche  says,  all  justify 
themselves,  and  seem  reasonable  and  proportioned  to  their  object,  as  long  as 
we  continue  to  feel  them  (Pt.  Ill,  ch.  iv,  p.  267). 

This  fatal  weakness  in  mankind  is  the  source  of  half  the  himian 
disorders,  and  it  is  mitigated  only  by  our  perceptions  of  the  judg- 
ments of  people  who  really  are  removed  from  the  passions  and  so 
are  disinterested.  Eventually  the  general  collective  judgments 
upon  classes  of  actions  crystallize  into  formal  rules  of  ethics ;  but 
he  repeats  that  the  instinctive  and  sympathetic  impartial  feeling 
about  particular  cases  is  the  origin  and  sole  authority  of  such  rule. 

Suggestions  of  Hedonism 

The  sentence  following  the  one  quoted  above,  regarding  the 
innate  desire  for  approval  of  our  fellows,  would  serve,  however,  to 
convict  Adam  Smith  of  being  a  hedonist.  "She  (Nature)  taught 
him  (man)  to  feel  pleasure  in  their  favorable,  and  pain  in  their 
unfavorable  regard."  Such  traces  of  a  pleasure-pain  mechanics 
are  rather  frequent.  He  connects  gratitude  and  resentment  with 
pleasures  conferred  or  pain  inflicted  (Pt.  H,  sec.  3,  ch.  i,  p.  160); 
he  says  that  sympathy  with  joy  is  agreeable,  while  it  is  painful  to 
go  along  with  grief,  and  therefore  we  always  enter  into  the  latter 
with  reluctance  (Pt.  I,  sec.  3,  ch.  i,  p.  73) ;  and  in  discussing  pru- 
dence, he  gives  a  straightforward  summary  of  the  tutelage  of  the 
appetites  (of  sense)  and  of  pleasure  and  pain  from  infancy  to  the 
adult  with  full-fledged  habits.  At  first  the  appetites  and  sensa- 
tions are  the  supreme  motives,  and  development  is  simply  of  care 
and  foresight  in  caring  for  these  egoistic  interests.  But  presently 
the  youth  perceives  that  the  resources  called  fortune  are  desirable 
not  merely  to  satisfy  these  original  appetites  and  pleasures  but 
also  to  win  credit,  rank,  and  distinction  among  his  fellows.  This 
latter  use  develops  into  the  strongest  single  incentive  to  money- 
making.  The  youth  also  finds  that  upon  his  moral  character  also 
depends  other  peoples'  respect,  and  hence  prudence  recommends 
ordinary  morality  to  him  (Pt.  VI,  sec.  i,  pp.  370-371).  Also  in 
many  of  his  references  to  the  impartial  judge  within  the  breast, 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  ADAM  SMITH  53 

he  speaks  of  the  "acquisition"  of  self-command,  and  of  the 
"habit "  of  viewing  our  situations  impartially.  He  thinks  that  the 
man  with  most  capacity  for  sympathizing  with  the  passions  of 
others  usually  has  also  the  larger  capacity  for  acquiring  self- 
command. 

Of  course  he  took  the  power  of  association  and  habit  for 
granted;  everyone  does,  they  are  sufficiently  obvious.  He  was  in- 
terested only  to  argue  that  the  human  motives  are  not  in  all 
particulars  derived  from  associations  of  simple,  pleasant  or  pain- 
ful sensations  with  the  situations  or  acts  through  which  they  have 
been  achieved;  and  that  we  have  natural  pleasures  and  pains 
springing  from  more  complex  instinctive  courses  of  action.  He 
rejects,  definitely  and  emphatically,  the  '  utility  '  explanation  of 
all  conduct  and  desires ;  he  was  '  anti-intellectualist '  enough  to 
deny  that  human  beings  in  general  calculate  and  anticipate  all 
the  advantages  and  disadvantages  which  their  various  actions  do 
in  fact  bring  about.  He  thought  it  more  plausible  to  assume  an 
equipment,  in  every  animal,  of  "immediate  instincts"  —  some 
being  social  and  some  unsocial  —  which  instincts  in  the  whole 
creation  are  providentially  arranged  in  harmony.  Of  course  he 
uses  "utility"  in  the  narrow  sense  of  bodily  or  sensuous  satisfac- 
tion, whereas  pleasure  and  pain,  to  him,  were  characteristic  of  all 
motives  whatever,  and  determined  whether  the  motives  should  be 
those  of  seeking  or  avoidance. 

He  never  drew  the  line  very  sharply  between  the  innate  and  the 
acquired  in  the  powerful  passions  or  motives  which  are  important 
in  social  life.  Hunger,  thirst,  sex  attraction,  the  desire  for  appro- 
bation, the  principle  of  sympathy,  and  the  general  forces  of  sen- 
sory pleasure  and  pain,  are  the  only  instinctive  tendencies  upon 
which  he  is  definite.  The  propensities  to  truck  and  barter,  to 
resent  injuries  and  feel  gratitude,  and  to  elaborate  curious  con- 
trivances are  also  spoken  of  as  original  dispositions,  however,  and 
apparently  were  considered  part  of  that  characteristic  human  en- 
dowment, not  built  up  by  experience  or  associative  combinations 
of  sense-utilities,  which  endowment  was  to  him  the  main  source  of 
the  social  and  moral  forces. 


CHAPTER  V 

THE  UTILITARIAN  PSYCHOLOGY:  JEREMY  BENTHAM 

It  was  the  special  variety  of  psychological  hedonism  which  was 
taught  by  three  utilitarian  leaders,  that  became  the  heritage  of 
the  classical  economists  following  Adam  Smith;  and  to  this 
psychological  system  modern  critics  ascribe  many  alleged  short- 
comings in  present-day  economic  doctrines.  It  seems  worth 
while,  therefore,  to  undertake  a  rather  full  examination  of  this 
part  of  the  utilitarian  system,  so  that  when  later  we  have  con- 
sidered the  testimony  of  present-day  psychology,  we  can  form 
some  judgment  as  to  where  the  utilitarian  errors  did,  if  at  all, 
vitiate  the  economic  theory  of  these  classical  economists. 

His  General  Psychological  and  Ethical  System 

Jeremy  Bentham's  Principles  of  Morals  and  Legislation  was 
first  published  in  1789.  This  work  and  his  Table  of  the  Springs  of 
Action,  written  some  time  later  and  said  to  have  been  revised  by 
James  Mill,  give  a  fairly  complete  and  systematic  exposition  of 
his  philosophy  of  motives,  though  there  are  numerous  supple- 
mentary hints  and  statements  scattered  through  the  dozen 
volumes  of  his  collected  works. 

Bentham  was  an  amateur  psychologist,  even  for  his  time,  but  he 
had  studied  considerable  ethical  and  poUtical  literature.  Two 
supposed  axioms  were  becoming  commonplace  in  discussions  of 
those  subjects  at  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century,  and  both  were 
referred  to  interchangeably  as  the  'principle  of  utility.'  The  first 
axiom  was  that  men  naturally  are  moved  only  by  pleasure  and 
pain;  the  second  was  that  the  greatest  happiness  of  the  greatest 
number  is  the  sole  or  chief  standard  of  ethical  judgment.  These 
doctrines  are  known  now  respectively  as  psychological  and 
ethical  hedonism.  Bentham's  school  was  remarkable  for  its  zeal 
in  attempting  to  put  the  greatest  happiness  ethical  principle  into 

54 


UTILITARIAN  PSYCHOLOGY:   JEREMY  BENTHAM       55 

effect  in  political  affairs,  and  for  expounding  in  explicit  and  logical 
form  the  psychological  hedonist  premises,  rather  than  for  originat- 
ing these  utilitarian  principles.^ 

Bentham's  psychology,  we  repeat,  was  crude.  The  then-exist- 
ing works  of  Hartley,  Hume  and  Brown,  at  least,  were  based  on  a 
much  closer  study  of  psychological  facts  than  he  ever  took  the 
trouble  to  make.  But  he  put  the  common-sense  hedonistic  theory 
of  conduct  into  luminous  and  popular  form,  through  which  it  had 
the  widest  influence  from  that  day  to  this,  and  his  fertile  mind 
carried  it  forward  into  all  manner  of  projects  for  social  reform. 
His  disciple  James  Mill,  however,  who  had  studied  thoroughly  the 
best  psychological  work  then  available,  wrote  in  1829  a  systematic 
treatise  in  which  the  utilitarian  theory  of  natural  motives  was 
stated  in  compact  and  scientifically  rigorous  form.  To  that 
treatise  we  shall  presently  turn  our  attention. 

Bentham  concentrates  attention  (so  far  as  his  psychology  goes) 
upon  the  feelings  of  pleasure  and  pain,  which  according  to  him  are 
the  only  efficient  causes  of  human  behavior.  They  are,  as  he 
says,  the  '  sovereign  masters  of  mankind.'  "It  is  for  them  alone 
to  point  out  what  we  ought  to  do,  as  well  as  to  determine  what  we 
shall  do,"  his  opening  paragraph  states.  He  complains  in  his  in- 
troduction that  philosophers,  including  Aristotle,  have  neglected 
the  "logic  of  the  will"  (laws  of  the  springs  of  action)  in  favor  of 
the  "logic  of  the  understanding"  which  latter  is  of  importance 
only  because  of  the  understanding's  direction  of  the  will.^  How 
he  defines  these  original  driving  feelings  we  shall  see  in  a  moment; 
here  we  may  observe  his  statement  that  happiness,  utility,  one's 
interest,  all  reduce  to  the  same  thing,  —  pleasure,  or  the  avoid- 
ance of  pain.  These  terms,  as  applied  to  the  commum'ty,  mean 
the  sum  of  the  pleasures  or  pains  of  the  individuals  making  it  up. 
The  principle  of  utility,  or  greatest  happiness  principle,  "ap- 
proves or  disapproves  of  every  action  whatsoever,  according  to 
the  tendency  which  it  appears  to  have  to  augment  or  diminish  the 
happiness  of  the  party  whose  interest  is  in  question." 

^  See  references  in  W.  C.  Mitchell,  "Bentham's  Felicific  Calculus,"  Pol.  Sci. 
Quar.,  June,  1918. 

2  Principles  of  Morals  and  Legislation,  reprint  of  1876,  p.  13. 


56  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

He  defends  both  psychological  and  ethical  hedonism,  it  thus 
appears.  The  greatest  possible  amount  of  happiness  or  pleasure  in 
the  world  is  the  greatest  good  —  he  brushes  aside  other  criteria  of 
the  good,  such  as  the  alleged  intuitive  moral  sense,  they  are 
arbitrary  and  anarchical  —  and  the  greatest  happiness  is  there- 
fore the  only  proper  aim  of  the  legislator,  as  it  is  of  every  citizen. 

But  each  individual  is  in  fact  moved  by  pleasure,  says  Ben- 
tham;  and  one  asks  immediately.  Is  everything,  then,  as  it  should 
be?  Do  men  do  nothing  wrong?  Of  course  not;  Bentham's  life 
was  a  continual  crusade  against  wrongs.  Men  are  short-sighted  in 
their  pursuit  of  happiness,  he  explains;  every  man  pursues  what 
for  the  moment  he  conceives  to  be  his  best  interest  or  good,  but  he 
is  frequently  mistaken  as  to  the  long-run  results  of  his  actions. 
The  great  moral  reform,  therefore,  is  education;  virtue  is  knowl- 
edge. A  passage  from  the  Deontology,  pieced  together  rather 
unintelligently  from  fragments  of  his  writings  after  Bentham's 
death  by  the  disciple  Bowring,  gives  this  doctrine  in  a  crude  form: 

It  will  scarcely  be  denied  that  every  man  acts  with  a  view  to  his  own 
interest  —  not  a  correct  view  —  because  that  would  obtain  for  him  the 
greatest  possible  portion  of  felicity;  and  if  every  man,  acting  correctly  for  his 
own  interest,  obtained  the  maximum  of  obtainable  happiness,  mankind 
would  reach  the  millenium  of  accessible  bliss;  and  the  end  of  morality  —  the 
general  happiness  —  be  accomplished.  To  prove  that  the  immoral  action  is  a 
miscalculation  of  self-interest, —  to  show  how  erroneous  an  estimate  the 
vicious  man  makes  of  pains  and  pleasures,  is  the  purpose  of  the  intelligent 
moralist.  Unless  he  can  do  this  he  does  nothing:  for,  as  has  been  stated 
above,  for  a  man  not  to  pursue  what  he  deems  likely  to  produce  to  him  the 
greatest  sum  of  enjoyment  is  in  the  very  nature  of  things  impossible. ^ 

So  far  as  this  statement  goes,  his  doctrine  involves  the  vicious 
circle:  A  man  always  acts  for  what  he  believes  to  be  his  own 
interest;  and  his  interest  is  that  which  he  does,  or  would  do  if  he 
knew  enough.  The  implication  is,  that  a  long-run  and  shrewdly 
calculating  egotism  will  achieve  the  maximum  happiness  of  soci- 
ety; that  there  is  a  fundamental  harmony  of  selfish  desires  which 

^  Deontology,  Ch.  I,  p.  13.  Cf.  James  Mill,  Analysis  of  the  Human  Mind, 
Ch.  XXII,  sec.  i:  "For  the  value  of  the  pleasures  in  question  [for  the  sake  of 
which  a  vicious  act  is  performed]  is  infinitely  outweighed  by  the  value  of  the  pains. 
The  business  of  a  good  education  is  to  make  the  associations  and  the  values 
correspond." 


UTILITARIAN  PSYCHOLOGY:   JEREMY  BENTHAM       57 

the  moralist  may  painstakingly  discover,  and  which,  when  dis- 
covered, will  automatically  lead  all  men  to  be  virtuous  because  it 
will  show  them  how  to  be  most  consummately  selfish.  It  is  belief 
in  the  beneficence  of  the  Invisible  Hand's  natural  order,  carried  to 
an  extreme  limit;  but,  as  we  shall  see,  Bentham  did  not  cling  to 
it  consistently  all  his  life.  He  came  to  think  there  are  some 
irreconcilable  conflicts  of  natural  desires,  which  can  be  arbi- 
trated only  by  force  —  the  force  of  society  —  or  by  artificially 
inculcated  ideals. 

'  Simple  Pleasures  ' 

Returning  to  the  psychology  with  which  he  prefaced  the 
earliest  of  his  major  works,  we  find  a  catalogue  of  the  *  simple  ' 
pleasures  and  pains  which  are  the  original  springs  of  action.  This 
analysis  gives  a  definite  content  to  the  term  '  self-interest,'  and 
thus  rescues  him  from  the  circular  reasoning  of  naive  hedonism.^ 
Directions  concerning  the  *  felicific  calculus  '  are  given  at  the 
same  time,  that  is,  the  principles  to  be  observed  in  measuring 
pleasures  and  pains,  and  in  comparing  them  among  each  other. 
These  simple  and  primitive  affections  he  clearly  considers  to  be 
the  only  ultimate  motives  or  sources  of  *  interest.'  ^  The  elemen- 
tary pleasures  are  nine  of  sense,  including  those  of  intoxication  of 
eye  and  ear  ("independent  of  association"),  of  health  ("espe- 
cially at  times  of  moderate  bodily  exertion"),  of  novelty  or 
"gratification  of  the  appetite  of  curiosity."  Beside  these  nine 
alleged  pleasures  of  sense,  there  are  (in  the  earlier  publication) 
thirteen  other  simple  pleasures,  viz.:  Those  of  wealth,  skill, 
amity,  good  name,  power,  piety,  benevolence  (or  good-will  or 
sympathy),  malevolence,  memory,  imagination,  expectation, 
those  dependent  on  association,  and  of  relief.^  The  pains  are 
mostly  *  opposites  '  of  the  pleasures,  as  Hobbes  would  say. 

In  the  Table,  constructed  long  after  the  Principles  of  Morals 
and  Legislation,  he  struck  out  the  pleasures  of  skill,  and  specifi- 

^  Morals  and  Legislation,  Chs.  IV-VI;  also  the  Table  in  Works  I,  pp.  195-219. 
The  lists  are  not  quite  the  same  in  the  two  references,  as  wiU  appear. 

^  Morals  and  Legislation,  Ch.  X,  Motives;  marginal  note  to  sec.  2:  "Nothing 
can  act  of  itself  as  a  motive  but  the  ideas  of  pleasure  or  pain." 

3  Ihid.,  Ch.  V. 


58  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

cally  stated  that  there  is  no  pleasure  produced  by  labor  as  such. 
In  common  speech  industry  does  have  a  connotation  of  interest,  he 
observed,  but  this  interest  is  simply  the  desire  for  the  wealth 
which  is  to  be  secured  by  the  labor.^  As  Leslie  Stephenre  marks, 
Bentham  took  great  delight  in  his  own  labors;  but  he  doubtless 
considered  that  such  satisfaction  was  to  be  attributed  to  curi- 
osity, moderate  bodily  exercise  and  benevolence,  which  are  among 
his  simple  pleasures.  His  exhaustively  elaborate  classifications, 
such  as  the  Table  of  Springs  of  Action  (giving  all  the  '  eulogistic, 
neutral  and  dylogistic  '  (or  derogatory)  names  for  the  motive 
which  springs  from  each  pleasure,  the  '  corresponding  interest,' 
and  so  on) ,  all  serve  in  some  degree  to  verify  the  existence  in  him 
of  that  love  of  system  which  Adam  Smith  had  commented  upon, 
and  the  '  pleasure  of  curiosity  '  of  his  own  catalogue. 

It  has  been  pointed  out  by  his  followers  as  well  as  by  critics 
that  his  list  of  simple  pleasures  and  pains  is  crude.  How  he  could 
consider  the  pleasures  of  wealth,  power,  memory,  imagination, 
expectation,  association  —  to  go  no  further  —  as  simple,  a  psy- 
chologist would  be  unable  to  understand.  James  Mill's  elements 
were  much  nearer  to  real  ones.  But  it  is  instructive  to  notice  that 
he  attempted  in  more  thorough-going  fashion  than  his  predeces- 
sors whom  we  have  examined,  to  reduce  all  human  motives  scien- 
tifically to  a  few  specified  elementary  pleasures  and  pains, 
common  to  all  mankind,  which  elements  could  be  indefinitely 
varied  in  their  combinations  by  association ;  and  that  further,  he 
included  a  few  altruistic  impulses  among  his  simple  pleasures. 
There  is  no  such  thing  as  a  disinterested  motive,  he  tells  us, 
though  there  are  motives  which  are  not  self-regarding.^  His  great 
object  is  to  attack  the  arbitrary  and  intuitional  systems  of  morals, 
which  he  thought  had  tended  toward  moral  irresponsibility  in 
practical  affairs,  and  to  pin  the  whole  ethical  question  upon  an 
objective,  impartial  examination  of  the  consequences  of  action 
upon  human  happiness. 

Although  people  will  call  any  motive  by  a  harsh  name  in  some 
circumstances,  he  goes  on,  no  motive  is  bad  of  itself.  The  case 
simply  is  that  some  motives  more  uniformly  lead  to  good  con- 

1  Works  I,  p.  214.  2  Ibid.,  p.  212. 


UTILITARIAN  PSYCHOLOGY:   JEREMY  BENTHAM       59 

sequences  for  the  general  happiness  than  others.  The  motive  of 
good-will  or  benevolence,  in  fact,  usually  brings  about  results 
that  are  good  for  society,  and  so  it  is  a  '  tutelary  '  motive,  re- 
straining the  more  often  harmful  interests.  Other  tutelary  mo- 
tives are  love  of  reputation,  amity  and  religion.^  He  admits  of  a 
hierarchy  among  motives,  according  to  the  preponderance  of  their 
effects  on  the  community.  In  the  Table  he  remarks  that  men  in  a 
savage  state  have  existed  from  the  first  in  countless  multitudes, 
with  scarcely  a  trace  of  the  social  or  tutelary  motives,  which  in- 
dicates that  the  self -regarding  interests,  are,  after  all,  chiefly  to  be 
thanked  for  individual  and  racial  preservation.^ 

He  notices,  with  the  classical  psychologists  and  many  other 
ancient  observers,  our  human  tendency  to  beget  judgments  by 
wishes  and  to  try  to  '  rationalize  '  such  conclusions  after  we  have 
jumped  at  them:  *'As  by  judgment,  desire,  is  influenced,  so  by 
desire,  judgment:  witness  interest-begotten  prejudice:"^  (and 
throughout  his  works  he  frequently  testified  to  the  efiicacy  of 
*  sinister  '  or  '  interest-begotten  '  prejudice,  which  his  philan- 
thropies encountered  at  every  turn) .  Since  an  action  usually  may 
be  produced  by  several  motives  acting  conjointly,  "The  best  mo- 
tive that  will  be  recognized  as  capable  of  producing  the  effect  in 
question,  is  the  motive  to  which  the  man  himself  .  .  .  will  be  dis- 
posed to  ascribe  his  conduct,  and  ...  to  exhibit  it  in  the  char- 
acter of  the  sole  efficient  cause,"  whilst  his  enemies  will  do  the 
reverse,  as  is  continually  illustrated  by  party  politics^  He  gives 
quite  a  modern  discussion  of  such  "substituted,"  or  as  we  might 
say,  'camouflaged'  motives. 

The  Felicific  Calculus 

But  we  must  come  to  the  '  felicific  calculus,'  and  to  his  con- 
ception of  human  rationaHty,  which  are  the  objects  of  so  much 
suspicion  by  present-day  social  psychologists.^ 

1  Morals  and  Legislation,  Chs.  X,  XI.        ^  Works  I,  p.  216.  ^  Ibid.,  p.  208. 

*  Ibid.,  pp.  218-219.  See  also  long  note  in  Morals  and  Legislation  on  the  natural 
rights  theory  of  government. 

^  See  the  excellent  paper,  designed  to  expose  the  pseudo-simplicity  and  logical 
defects  of  these  parts  of  Bentham's  philosophy,  by  Wesley  C.  Mitchell,  "Bentham's 
Felicific  Calculus,"  Pol.  Sci.  Quar.,  June,  1918. 


6o  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

The  greatest  happiness  principle,  says  Bentham,  is  not  merely  a 
pious  aspiration,  but  it  admits  of  a  definite  quantitative  logic. 
The  legislator  should  understand  how  to  evaluate  a  *  lot  of  pain  ' 
or  of  pleasure,  because  they  are  at  once  his  ends  and  his  instru- 
ments or  forces.  And  how  evaluate  them?  A  simple  pleasure  or 
pain  will  vary  in  value  to  an  individual,  Bentham  replies,  accord- 
ing to  (i)  intensity,  (2)  duration,  (3)  certainty  or  uncertainty, 
(4)  propinquity  or  remoteness,  (5)  fecundity  or  chance  of  being 
followed  by  sensations  of  the  same  kind,  (6)  purity,  or  chance  of 
not  being  followed  by  sensations  of  the  opposite  kind.  When  the 
happiness  of  a  community  is  under  consideration  instead  of  that 
of  an  individual,  a  single  criterion  must  be  added  to  the  above, 
(7)  extent,  or  number  of  persons  affected.^  Is  it  an  impossible 
task  to  make  such  a  calculation?  No,  says  Bentham. 

In  all  this  there  is  nothing  but  what  the  practice  of  mankind,  wheresoever 
they  have  a  clear  view  of  their  own  interest,  is  perfectly  conformable  to.  An 
article  of  property,  an  estate  in  land  for  instance,  is  valuable,  on  what  ac- 
count? On  account  of  the  pleasures  of  all  kinds  which  it  enables  a  man  to 
produce  ...  (or  pains  avert).  .  .  .  But  the  value  of  such  an  article  of 
property  is  universally  understood  to  rise  or  fall  according  to  the  length  or 
shortness  of  the  time  which  a  man  has  in  it ;  the  certainty  or  uncertainty  of 
its  coming  into  possession;  and  the  nearness  or  remoteness  of  the  time  .  .  . 
it  is  to  come  into  his  possession.'' 

Pleasures,  then,  being  the  ultimate  values  of  property,  are  dis- 
counted according  to  remoteness  and  certainty;  a  strong  hint  in 
the  direction  of  the  time-preference  element  in  the  theory  of 
interest. 

It  is  not  to  be  supposed,  he  says,  that  the  whole  elaborate 
algebraic  calculation  of  pleasure-pain  values,  in  units  of  a  barely 
distinguishable  difference  in  affective  quality  (compare  Weber's 
unit  of  sensation  in  psychology),  should  be  or  is  performed  pre- 
vious to  every  moral  judgment,  or  legislative  operation,  but  it 
should  be  kept  in  view  as  an  ideal.^  In  applying  the  calculus, 
moreover,  we  must  always  consider  thirty-two  '  circumstances 
influencing  sensibility  '  in  different  individuals,  such  as  health, 
strength,  sex,  sanity,  climate,  education,  etc.,  —  these  are  espe- 

1  Morals  and  Legislation,  Ch.  IV. 

2  IbU.,  Ch.  IV,  sec.  8.  3  /j^-j.^  ch.  IV,  sec.  6. 


UTILITARIAN  PSYCHOLOGY:   JEREMY  BENTHAM       6l 

cially  to  be  related  to  the  severity  of  punishment,  so  as  to  equalize 
the  net  pleasures  and  pains  inflicted. 

He  met,  of  course,  with  a  difficult  puzzle  in  spinning  out  this 
introspective  theory.  How  compare  different  pleasures  with  one 
another,  either  within  different  minds  or  within  the  same  mind? 
How  evaluate  the  pleasure  of  a  cold  bath  in  terms  of  the  pleasure 
of  a  symphony?  to  use  Bohm-Bawerk's  illustration.  Can  a  man 
even  compare  the  intensities  of  the  same  pleasure  to  him,  at 
different  times?  ^ 

Bentham  came  to  doubt  if  the  intensity  of  feelings  could  be 
calculated,  but  at  least  the  duration  can,  and  the  factors  of  re- 
moteness and  certainty  are  also  susceptible  of  mathematical 
treatment.  Pleasures  qualitatively  different  are  impossible  of 
direct  comparison ;  it  would  be  like  comparing  pears  with  apples, 
he  says.  But  the  idea  occurred  to  him  that  an  individual  does 
equate  all  his  multi-colored  desires  in  terms  of  the  money-unit. 
Two  pleasures,  for  each  of  which  he  is  just  willing  to  part  with  a 
dollar,  can  be  considered  equal.  That  relieves  the  difficulty  in  the 
case  of  a  single  agent.  Does  it  equate  the  pleasures  of  different 
people?  No,  for  Bentham  is  aware  of  the  principle  of  diminishing 
utility,  or  saturation  of  pleasure.  The  monarch's  happiness  is 
certainly  greater  than  the  laborer's,  but  how  much  greater?  Not 
certainly  in  proportion  to  their  respective  incomes.  Twice  as 
happy  would  probably  be  a  liberal  allowance.  The  idea  of  min- 
imizing the  difficulty  by  using  terms  of  small  increments  of  feeling 
occurred  to  him,  but  was  not  worked  out  in  much  detail. 

So  that  on  the  whole,  the  feasibility  of  an  exact  hedonic  calculus 
became  dubious  to  him;  but  because  of  the  commensurability  of 
feelings  as  to  duration,  certainty,  remoteness  and  in  money  meas- 
ure, and  the  steady  average  of  human  nature  which  made  the 
circumstances  affecting  sensibility  seem  only  slightly  important, 
he  considered  he  had  rendered  morality  and  legislation  exact  as 
well  as  positive  sciences.  The  puzzles  of  the  calculus  are  of  great 
interest  to  mathematical  economists,  but  even  if  it  is  hopelessly 
inexact,  the  substance  of  the  hedonist  theory  of  human  motives 

^  See  Mitchell's  article  cited  above  for  quotations  from  Bentham  showing  his 
perplexity  on  this  point,  and  on  other  points  of  the  calculus. 


62  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

may  nevertheless  be  true.  We  shall  return  to  this  question  of 
commensurability  in  Chapter  XVII,  after  we  have  surveyed  the 
reports  of  modern  psychology  on  the  influence  of  pleasure  and 
pain  on  motives  in  general. 

Human  Rationality 

Returning  to  questions  of  human  rationality  and  educability, 
we  have  seen  that  Bentham  considered  the  great  and  only  task  of 
the  intelligent  moralist  to  be  in  showing  people  where  their  long- 
run  interests  lie.  Once  they  see  this  light,  morality  is  plain  sailing, 
for  inevitably  people  will  follow  their  apparent  '  interests,'  but 
temporarily,  at  least,  interest  and  duty  must  be  made  artificially 
to  coincide  by  governmental  machinery;  and  the  older  he  grew, 
the  more  convinced  he  was  that  such  was  the  necessary  state  of 
things  for  all  time  to  come.  In  his  youth  he  had  supposed  that 
statesmen  would  act  upon  the  greatest  happiness  principle  as  a 
matter  of  course,  and  that  he  needed  only  to  show  them  how  they 
could  best  promote  the  general  interest.  When  past  middle  life, 
however,  he  discovered  that  statesmen  also  prefer  their  own  pri- 
vate advantage  to  the  greatest  happiness  of  their  people,  and  he 
was  forced  to  add  to  his  axioms  the  '  universal  self-preference 
principle,'  and  to  devise  cunning  machinery  for  making  the  ruler's 
interest  coincide  with  his  duty,  —  that  is,  with  the  interests  of  his 
subjects.^  In  his  Table  of  the  Springs  of  Action,  he  is  able  to  sum 
up  the  sources  of  evil  as  follows : 

Indigenous  intellectual  weakness  —  adoptive  (due  to  environment)  intel- 
lectual weakness — or,  in  one  word,  prejudice — sinister  interest  (understand 
self-conscious  sinister  interest)  lastly,  interest-begotten  (though  not  self-con- 
scious) prejudice  —  by  one  or  other  of  these  demonstrations,  may  be  desig- 
nated (it  is  believed)  the  cause  of  whatever  is  on  any  occasion  amiss,  in  the 
opinions  or  conduct  of  mankind.^ 

Is  it  a  hopeless  task  to  combat  passion,  ignorance  and  prejudice 
with  refined  measures  of  reward  and  punishment,  and  of  educa- 
tion as  to  true  interests?  Is  he  assuming  a  too  reasonable  himian 
nature?  Bentham  represents  the  human  will  always  to  be  deter- 

1  See  Mitchell,  op.  cit.,  p.  177;  and  Bentham,  Works  I,  pp.  240-259;  X,  pp.  79, 80. 

2  Works  I,  p.  217. 


UTILITARIAN  PSYCHOLOGY:   JEREMY  BENTHAM       63 

mined  by  a  calculation  of  the  excess  of  pleasure  promised  by  the 
contemplated  action  over  the  probable  pain.^  *  Interest-begotten 
prejudice  '  may  be  regarded  as  only  a  short-circuit  to  a  pleasure- 
determined  volition;  and,  if  it  ignores  more  distant  personal  in- 
terests, that  is  simply  due  to  the  general  human  imperfection  in 
knowledge  which  no  one  has  ever  overlooked.  To  the  objections 
that  his  schemes  for  reform,  based  on  a  nice  adjustment  of  penal- 
ties to  temptations,  would  fail  because  ignorance  never  troubles 
itself  about  laws,  while  passion  does  not  calculate,  he  answered 
(in  the  first  edition  of  Morals  and  Legislation) : 

But  the  evil  of  ignorance  admits  of  cure:  and  as  to  the  proposition  that 
passion  does  not  calculate,  this,  like  most  of  these  very  general  and  oracular 
propositions,  is  not  true.  When  matters  of  such  importance  as  pain  and 
pleasure  are  at  stake,  and  these  in  the  highest  degree  (the  only  matters,  in 
short,  that  can  be  of  importance)  who  is  there  that  does  not  calculate?  .  .  . 
I  woxild  not  say,  that  even  a  madman  does  not  calculate.  (Footnote:  There 
are  few  madmen  but  what  are  observed  to  be  afraid  of  the  straight  waist- 
coat.) Passion  calculates,  more  or  less,  in  every  man:  in  different  men,  ac- 
cording to  the  warmth  or  coolness  of  their  dispositions;  according  to  the 
firmness  or  irritability  of  their  minds,  according  to  the  nature  of  the  motives 
by  which  they  are  acted  upon.  Happily,  of  all  passions,  that  is  the  most 
given  to  calculation,  from  the  excesses  of  which,  by  reason  of  its  strength, 
constancy,  and  universality,  society  has  most  to  apprehend:  I  mean  that 
which  corresponds  to  the  motive  of  pecuniary  interest ;  so  that  these  niceties, 
if  such  they  are  to  be  called,  have  the  best  chances  of  their  being  efficacious, 
where  efficacy  is  of  the  most  importance.^ 

That  is,  as  to  misconduct  over  objects  of  pecuniary  value,  the 
statesman  can  offset  the  motives  to  theft,  etc.,  by  deterrent  pun- 
ishments which  will  exert  just  the  necessary  strength  on  the  side  of 
honesty.  It  is  rather  significant  that  in  treating  of  individual  cal- 
culations of  pleasures  and  pains,  rewards  and  punishments, 
Bentham  so  often  turned  to  illustrations  involving  the  use  of 
money.  The  instances  of  equating  different  kinds  of  pleasures, 
and  discounting  future  utilities,  will  be  remembered.  He  assumes 
that  we  all  make  the  same  kind  of  reckonings  on  other  allegedly 
primitive  utilities,  and  he  does  not  realize  that  money  com- 
putations are  possible  only  because  of  a  great  many  customs,  and 
institutions,  and  an  accumulation  of  knowledge,  which  are  ages 

^  Works  I,  p.  209. 

2  Ibid.,  p.  91;  Morals  and  Legislation,  edition  of  1822,  Ch.  XIV. 


64  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

beyond  the  really  primitive  man.  Our  sophisticated  practices  re- 
garding money  values  are  evidently  no  indication  of  our  procedure 
in  estimating  non-pecuniary  values.  The  man  who  is  angry 
enough  to  strike  another  is  scarcely  able  to  decide  just  how  much 
he  wants  to  strike,  and  how  a  present  blow  would  compare  in 
value  with  a  future  blow.  But  this  is  again  a  question  of  the  pos- 
sible precision  of  the  hedonic  calculus;  it  does  not  necessarily 
strike  at  the  fundamental  general  theory  of  hedonist  motivation. 

Human  Educability  and  Perfectibility 

The  faith  of  Bentham  and  his  school  in  the  educability  of  all 
men  to  a  wise  and  nearly  harmonious  pursuit  of  self-interest  was 
great.  He  knew  the  doctrine  of  association  of  ideas  from  the 
earlier  philosophers,  especially  through  his  friend  James  Mill. 
That  doctrine  represented  that  pleasure  may  be  associated  with, 
and  so  furnish  motive  power  toward,  almost  any  object  or  action, 
provided  the  object  or  act  and  the  pleasure  are  experienced 
several  times  coincidently  by  the  subject.  And  contrariwise  with 
pains.  This  teaching  is  made  plausible,  as  we  know,  by  a  very 
large  number  of  facts,  both  from  our  accidental  experiences  and 
from  formal  education  with  its  birch  rod  behind  the  door.  Artful 
education  is  made  possible  through  artificial  association;  things 
which  are  already  interesting,  that  is,  pleasant  or  painful,  must  be 
used  in  order  to  arouse  interest  in,  and  knowledge  of,  other  mat- 
ters to  which  we  are  originally  indififerent.  The  original  pleasures 
and  pains  are  considered  by  the  utilitarians  to  be  few,  and  nearly 
uniform  in  strength  throughout  mankind,  and  the  possibility  of 
creating  new  interests  in  accordance  with  the  educator's  desire,  by 
means  of  artificial  associations,  seemed  unlimited.  The  Bentham 
school  was  therefore  thoroughly  hopeful  of  humanity's  ultimate 
redemption  from  vice  by  education.  "As  respects  pleasures," 
said  Bentham,  "the  mind  of  man  possesses  a  happy  flexibility. 
One  source  of  amusement  being  cut  off,  it  endeavors  to  open  up 
another,  and  always  succeeds;  a  new  habit  is  easily  formed.^ 
Consequently  he  supported  financially  a  number  of  new,  educa- 
tionally reformatory  projects  —  such  as  the  '  Chrestomathic  ' 

1  Works  I,  p.  436,  quoted  in  Mitchell,  op.  cit. 


UTILITARIAN  PSYCHOLOGY:   JEREMY  BENTHAM       65 

school,  Robert  Owen's  plans,  and  his  proposed  *  Panopticon  ' 
penitentiary,  which  was  to  be  "a  mill  for  grinding  rogues  honest 
and  idle  men  industrious." 

He  professed  to  believe  there  are  no  innate  intellectual  or  moral 
differences  between  civilized  man  and  savage ;  ^  in  fact,  this 
eighteenth  century  doctrine  was  held  by  John  Stuart  Mill,  who 
said  in  his  Autobiography  that  one  of  the  main  objects  of  his  writ- 
ings had  been  to  show  that  the  apparent  differences  between 
races,  sexes  and  individuals  were  due  to  environment.  One  can 
easily  see  how  the  associationist  psychology  fostered  such  an 
*  a  priori '  belief.  Association  seemed  to  have  an  indefinite  power 
of  shaping  men's  mental  states;  and  instead  of  the  more  cautious 
proposition  that  we  will  push  the  association  explanation  as  far 
as  it  will  go,  before  resorting  to  the  mystical  instinct  or  intuition 
formula,  they  drew  the  downright  conclusion  that  natural  men- 
tal equality  is  a  fact,  —  that  the  association  explanation  can 
ultimately  be  made  complete  for  all  *  apparent '  differences. 
Bentham  was  not  always  sanguine  enough  to  hope  for  complete 
himian  perfectibility  through  education,  however,  nor  did  he  hold 
unwaveringly  to  the  theory  of  natural  equality.  Perhaps  happi- 
ness, he  wrote,  is  a  chimera.  "It  may  be  possible  to  diminish  the 
influence  of,  but  not  to  destroy,  the  sad  and  mischievous  passions. 
The  unequal  gifts  of  nature  and  of  fortune  will  always  create 
jealousies,"  etc.^  The  qualifications  contained  in  this  essay  were 
not  kept  steadily  in  view,  however,  and  he  is  found  giving  advice 
to  the  Terrorists  of  the  French  Revolution,  as  well  as  to  certain 
South  American  countries,  as  if  their  background  had  been  the 
same  as  his  own. 

The  '  Sanctions  ' 

For  purposes  of  government  at  present,  and  for  education  of 
the  youth,  the  legislator  must  use  sanctions,  or  artificial  applica- 
tions of  pain  and  pleasure,  to  make  duty  and  interest  coincide. 
The  sanctions  are  brought  into  view  in  the  third  chapter  of 
Morals  and  Legislation;  they  are  listed  in  four  classes,  — physical, 

"•  Mitchell,  op.  ciL,  p.  175. 

^  Influence  of  Time  and  Place  on  Legislation,  Works  I,  pp.  193,  194. 


66  '        ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

political,  moral  and  religious.  The  physical  sanctions  are  the 
pleasures  and  pains  which  result  from  our  spontaneous  contacts 
with  nature.  The  political  are  artificial  rewards  and  punishments 
employed  by  the  sovereign.  The  moral  '  or  popular  '  consist  in 
approval  or  disapproval  from  one's  neighbors.  The  religious  are 
the  supernatural  rewards  or  pains  looked  forward  to.  The  legis- 
lator, he  insists,  must  have  an  eye  upon  the  operations  of  the  two 
last-named  sanctions  as  well  as  on  his  own,  for  they  will  be  either 
powerful  allies  to  him  or  powerful  rivals.  The  artful  use  of  these 
classes  of  motives  for  social  welfare  is  the  thread  which  connects 
all  Bentham's  works,  for  he  was  always  trjdng  to  contribute  to- 
ward "that  (moral)  system,"  as  he  described  it,  "the  object  of 
which  is  to  rear  the  fabric  of  felicity  by  the  hands  of  reason  and 
law."  ^  He  distinguishes  carefully  the  cases  which  are  meet  for 
political  sanctions  and  those  which  had  best  be  left  to  the  other 
kinds,  and  he  draws  rules  for  the  severity  and  kind  of  political 
threats.  The  Utilitarians'  concentration  of  attention  on  the 
sanctions,  in  their  treatment  of  moral  and  political  problems,  has 
often  been  criticized  from  the  standpoint  of  human  instincts,  as 
by  Leslie  Stephen;  for  it  is  fairly  clear,  when  we  stop  to  think  of  it, 
that  all  men  are  not  kept  at  their  duty  simply  by  fear  of  want  or  of 
the  policeman.  There  are  many  binding,  social  ties  in  human 
nature,  and  the  artificial  sanctions  are  required  only  for  a  rela- 
tively few  details.  We  have  seen  that  some  natural  ties  appear  in 
Bentham's  psychology,  however,  the  '  simple  pleasures  '  of  good- 
will, amity  and  piety,  and- we  shall  find  some  other  bonds  in  the 
psychology  of  James  Mill. 

^  Morals  and  Legislation,  Ch.  I. 


CHAPTER  VI 

UTILITARIAN  PSYCHOLOGY:  THE  TWO  MILLS  AND  BAIN 

We  are  fortunate  in  having  available  an  edition  of  James  Mill's 
Analysis  of  the  Phenomena  of  the  Human  Mind  (first  published 
in  1829),  which  is  of  great  value  for  our  present  purposes,  — 
the  edition  of  1869,  revised  and  annotated  by  John  Stuart  Mill, 
Alexander  Bain  and  others.  This  edition  shows  how  far  these 
later  Utilitarian  psychologists  had  diverged  from  the  original 
psychology  of  Bentham  and  the  elder  Mill.  Bain  was  one  of  the 
last  of  the  so-called  associationists,  and  one  of  the  first  psycho- 
physical parallelists,  —  he  was  altogether  a  very  prominent  figure 
in  nineteenth  century  psychology,  writing  from  1850  onward  into 
William  James'  time. 

James  Mill's  Analysis  of  1829  came  eighty  years  after  the  psy- 
chological treatises  of  Hume  and  Hartley.  From  both  these 
authorities,  especially  Hartley,  Mill  drew  much  of  his  doctrine, 
which  provided  the  Utilitarian  philosophy  with  a  definite  and 
simple  hedonist  explanation  of  action,  and  a  theory  of  education. 
All  knowledge  is  considered  to  be  built  up  from  simple  sensations 
by  means  of  association,  and  all  motives  in  the  same  fashion  are 
derived  from  the  added  dynamic  character  of  sensations  in  being 
pleasant  or  painful.  He  takes  up  the  various  classes  of  higher 
mental  processes  and  motives,  and  attempts  to  show  how  they  are 
all  built  from  these  sensational  elements.  More  than  half  the 
work  is  occupied  with  the  theory  of  motives,  and  it  is  of  this  part 
that  we  shall  try  to  give  an  intelligible  sketch. 

The  Mechanics  of  Association 

Sensations  are  the  beginning  of  everything;  they  are  smell, 
hearing,  sight,  taste,  touch,  those  of  the  muscles,  alimentary 
canal  and  other  organic  sensations.  In  recent  years  neurologists 
have  made  more  refined  classes  of  sense-organs,  and  the  associa- 
tion theory  has  so  much  the  less  work  to  do.    The  Mills  and  Bain 

67 


68  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

attached  considerable  importance  to  our  obscure  and  unlocaliz- 
able  sensations,  from  internal  sense-organs  in  surfaces,  muscles 
and  glands ;  these  they  connected  with  emotional  consciousness  a 
little  in  the  fashion  of  the  James-Lange  theory.^ 

Now  every  sensation,  says  Mill,  leaves  a  trace  or  copy  or  image, 
which  can  be  aroused  after  the  object  that  caused  the  sensation  is 
gone.  After  seeing  the  sun,  for  example,  the  subject  can  shut  his 
eyes  and  still  have  an  experience  very  much  like  seeing  the  sun. 
The  copy  or  trace  thus  left  is  the  simple  'idea.'  Bain  thinks  it  is 
correlated  with  '  tracks  '  left  in  the  brain  by  the  sensation.  Ideas 
are  derived  only  from  sensations,  according  to  these  psychologists, 
and  are  never  innate  or  inborn. 

So  we  come  to  the  principles  governing  association  of  ideas. 
The  order  in  which  ideas  come  up  in  our  mind  is  not,  as  Hobbes 
said,  "so  casuall"  as  it  seems.  Ideas  come  in  the  order  in  which 
the  original  sensations  occurred,  which  is  either  synchronous  or 
successive.^  The  complex  idea  of  a  man  is  composed  of  ideas  from 
a  number  of  sensations  which  we  have  had  synchronously;  the 
ideas  composing  a  verse  or  prayer  are  associated  successively,  and 
can  scarcely  be  recalled  out  of  the  customary  order  .^ 

Of  course  not  all  sensations  felt  together  leave  enduring  associa- 
tions of  ideas.  Some  impressions  are  quickly  forgotten.  What  are 
the  causes  of  tenacity?  The  strength  of  an  association,  says  the 
author  (meaning  certainty,  permanence  and  facility  of  recall), 
depends  on  the  vividness,  the  frequency  and  the  recency  of  the 
associated  sensations.  Vividness  is  chiefly  a  matter  of  pleasure  or 
pain;  a  single  association  may  thus  be  burned  in,  as  with  persons 
who  cannot  bear  the  sight  of  a  surgeon  who  has  performed  a  pain- 
ful operation  upon  them,  although  they  feel  the  strongest  grati- 
tude toward  him.  The  strengthening  effect  of  frequency  is  abun- 
dantly illustrated  in  all  our  learning,  in  language,  arithmetic, 

'  E.  g.,  Mill,  Analysis,  I,  pp.  38,  47-50.  2  /j/^,^  c^,  m. 

^  Psychologists  have  always  disagreed  as  to  the  ultimate  principles  of  association. 
Aristotle,  we  remember,  had  suggested  contiguity  in  time  and  place,  similarity  and 
contrast.  Hume  stated  the  laws  to  be  contiguity,  causation  and  resemblance.  Mill's 
attempt  to  reduce  them  all  to  contiguity  seems  unsuccessful,  and  Bain  concluded 
there  are  just  two  cases,  contiguity  and  similarity  (including  contrast  under  simi- 
larity). 


PSYCHOLOGY:    THE  TWO  MILLS  AND  BAIN  69 

occupations,  what  not.  We  are  most  certain  to  remember  the 
chain  of  words  or  acts  that  we  have  gone  over  most  often. ^ 

In  many  of  our  firmly-estabhshed  associations,  Mill  goes  on, 
when  an  antecedent  idea  is  considered  of  no  interest  but  the  con- 
sequent idea  which  it  introduces  is  very  important,  we  '  forget 
instantly  '  the  first  idea,  in  associative  recalls,  and  so  the  course  by 
which  we  reached  the  interesting  consequent  will  often  be  un- 
known to  us.  We  will  call  it  an  '  unconscious  inference.'  Such  is 
the  case  with  the  conventional  signs,  —  words  or  letters,  which 
impart  to  us  interesting  news ;  and  with  visceral  sensations,  which 
are  associated  with  emotions.  Hartley  also  had  stressed  this 
dropping  from  consciousness  of  associating  links,  as  the  links  be- 
come very  familiar  and  J.  S.  Mill  and  Bain  dwell  upon  it  as  a  fact 
of  the  first  importance.  We  shall  find,  in  several  connections, 
that  it  is  a  fact  of  the  greatest  importance  and  that  their  notice 
of  it  goes  far  to  make  their  psychology  a  true  one. 

Some  theory  is  presented  in  this  chapter  both  by  father  and  by 
son,  as  to  the  limits  of  possible  associations. 

It  seems  to  follow  from  the  universal  law  of  association,  says  John  Mill, 
that  any  idea  could  be  associated  with  any  other  idea,  if  the  corresponding 
sensations,  or  even  the  ideas  themselves,  were  presented  in  juxtaposition 
with  sufl&cient  frequency.  If,  therefore,  there  are  ideas  which  cannot  be 
associated  with  each  other,  it  must  be  because  there  is  something  that  pre- 
vents this  juxtaposition.^ 

Then  he  goes  on  to  explain  and  amplify  his  father's  theory  on 
these  Umits.  Impossibility  of  experiencing  the  sensations  to- 
gether, as  the  taste  of  asafoetida  along  with  the  taste  of  sugar,  is 
one  condition  but  not  a  sufficient  one,  since  "We  are  but  too 
capable  of  associating  ideas  together  though  the  corresponding 
external  facts  are  really  incompatible."  (That  is,  we  draw  erro- 
neous conclusions  or  inferences.)  Hence  the  other  condition  of 
impossible  association  is  that  the  one  idea  either  contains  or  calls 
up  by  association  the  idea  of  the  absence  of  the  other.  This  little 
point  is  a  clue  to  their  belief  in  the  great  possibilities  of  education. 

^  Our  belief  in  the  external  world  and  in  its  characters  of  extension,  form  and  so 
on,  Mill  ascribes  to  invariable  and  inseparable  associations  of  experiences.  His  son 
considered  this  analysis  to  be  the  great  triumph  of  the  book  (Analysis,  Introduction, 
I,  pp.  91  ff.).  2  Ibid.,  I,  p.  98. 


70  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

It  would  be  of  considerable  advantage  to  us  if  we  could  make 
ourselves  familiar  with  James  Mill's  theory  of  knowledge  and 
reasoning,  and  the  deviations  from  it  of  his  son  in  the  Logic;  but 
these  are  large  enterprises.  Suffice  it  here  to  notice  that  associa- 
tion of  ideas  derived  from  sensations  supplies  James  Mill  with  all 
the  apparatus  he  needs  for  all  varieties  of  cognition,  and  his  son 
with  most  of  his  logical  equipment  (along  with  a  few  principles  of 
logical  necessity  which  he  could  not  quite  account  for  in  Humian 
fashion) .  The  immense  role  of  language  is  recognized  and  stressed, 
and  justly  so. 

Pleasure,  Pain  and  Motives 

We  proceed  with  the  mechanics  of  pleasure  and  pain  in  mo- 
tives, which  occupies  most  of  the  second  volume.  Some  sensations 
("probably  the  greater  number")  are  indifferent;  others  are 
pleasurable  or  painful.  The  difference  is  known  only  by  feeling, 
it  is  a  question  of  whether  the  subject  would  end  or  prolong  or 
simply  neglect  the  sensation,  if  he  had  the  power  to  choose.^  All 
the  senses  contain  these  three  classes.  (The  annotators  remark 
that  sensations  are  not  simply  either  pleasurable,  painful  or  indif- 
ferent; the  same  sensation,  in  different  degrees  of  intensity,  may 
vary  from  pleasant  to  painful,  though  the  quality  or  knowledge- 
giving  element  in  it  remains  the  same  and  can  be  separately  at- 
tended to.  This  is  one  of  the  puzzles  with  which  the  theory  of 
pleasure-pain  still  has  to  deal.) 

Now  ideas  of  the  events  which  are  constant  antecedents  of 
pleasurable  or  painful  sensations,  and  hence  are  supposed  to  be 
causes  of  them,  are  associated  with  the  ideas  of  the  pleasurable  or 
painful  and  intrinsically  interesting  sensations.  By  manifold 
associations  we  become  aware,  not  only  of  immediate  causes  of  our 
interesting  experiences,  but  also  of  remote  causes;  of  the  proc- 
esses of  food  supply,  as  well  as  of  the  food  immediately  before  us; 
of  the  musician  and  his  hire,  as  well  as  of  the  violin  which  gives 
forth  the  pleasant  sounds.  These  causes,  of  course,  are  much 
more  numerous  than  the  ultimate  sensations  (utilities  or  dis- 
utilities), and  since  some  of  the  remote  causes,  like  money,  present 

1  Mill,  Analysis,  II,  Ch.  XVII. 


PSYCHOLOGY:   THE  TWO  MILLS  AND  BAIN  JI 

greater  problems  than  do  the  immediate  causes  once  we  have 
money,  the  remote  causes  are  apt  to  occupy  our  attention  more 
than  the  immediate  causes.^  Money  is  useful  only  for  the  pleas- 
ures it  will  obtain,  yet  by  constant  association  of  it  with  various 
pleasures  and  states  of  relief,  it  frequently  comes  to  be  sought  as 
an  end  in  itself. 

His  Analysis  of  Human  Motives 

An  idea  of  a  pleasure  is  a  desire,  says  Mill,  and  the  idea  of  a  pain 
is  an  aversion;  but  at  that  stage  neither  is  a  motive  (Ch.  XIX). 
A  Motive  is  the  idea  of  a  pleasure  associated  with  the  idea  of  an 
action  of  our  own  as  its  cause  (Ch.  XXII).  So  we  come  to  his 
interesting  catalogue  of  motives,  and  analysis  of  them  into  sensa- 
tional elements  (Chs.  XXI-XXIII).  The  motives  are  classified 
according  to  the  remote  causes  of  pleasurable  and  painful  sensa- 
tions, under  the  following  heads:  Wealth,  power,  dignity,  our 
fellows,  the  objects  called  sublime  and  beautiful,  —  and  their 
contraries.  The  first  three  are  all  means  of  procuring  pleasure 
through  other  men's  services.  Power  does  this  chiefly  through 
fear,  and  is  in  some  instances  much  more  extensive  than  wealth 
can  possibly  be.  Dignity  secures  respect  and  services  through 
eminence  in  knowledge  and  wisdom,  as  well  as  in  wealth  and 
power. 

It  is  to  be  observed,  he  says,  That  Wealth,  Power,  and  Dignity,  derive  a 
great  portion  of  their  efficacy,  from  their  comparative  amount;  that  is,  from 
their  being  possessed  in  greater  quantity  than  most  other  people  possess 
them.2 

He  shows  in  numerous  other  passages  also  that  he  is  fully  sensible 
of  the  strong  motive  force  of  emulation,  but  clearly  he  regards  it  as 
arising  from  the  mathematical  advantage  of  superiority,  not  from 
instinctive  rivalry.^    Our  fellows  are  the  origins  of  '  affections,' 

J  MiU,  Analysis,  II,  Chs.  XVIII,  XIX.  2  7^^^.^  n^  p.  213. 

'  It  may  be  of  interest  to  compare  Hartley's  classification  of  pleasures  and  pains 
(1749)  which  is  almost  as  crude  as  Bentham's:  "The  pleasures  and  pains  may  be 
ranged  under  seven  general  classes,  viz.,  i.  Sensation;  2.  Imagination  (beauty  or 
deformity);  3.  Ambition;  4.  Self-interest;  5.  Sympathy;  6.  Theopathy  (con- 
templation of  the  deity) ;  7.  The  Moral  Sense.  Observations  on  Man,  Priestly's 
edition  of  1775,  Introduction,  p.  ii. 


72  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

and  hence  of  motives  of  the  greatest  influence ;  the  distinguishable 
cases  being  friendship,  kindness,  family,  country,  party,  mankind. 
But  he  observes, 

How  few  men  seem  to  be  at  all  concerned  about  their  fellow  creatures! 
How  completely  are  the  lives  of  most  men  absorbed  in  the  pursuits  of  wealth 
and  ambition!  With  how  many  does  the  love  of  Family,  of  Friend,  of  Coun- 
try, or  Mankind,  appear  completely  impotent,  when  opposed  to  their  love  of 
wealth,  or  of  power!  This  is  an  effect  of  misguided  association,  which  re- 
quires the  greatest  attention  in  Education  and  Morals.  ^ 

Let  us  notice  briefly  his  analyses  of  parental  affection  and  of  the 
moral  sense,  as  indicative  of  his  method.  First,  in  parental  devo- 
tion there  is  an  unusual  degree  of  general  human  sympathy,  which 
is  due  to  the  associative  revival  of  our  own  affective  feelings  by  the 
observation  of  pleasure  or  pain  in  another  person.  A  parent  is  led 
by  circumstances  to  give  great  attention  to  providing  satisfactions 
for  his  child,  and  hence  he  sympathizes  with  the  offspring  more 
frequently  than  with  other  persons.  The  reflection  of  the  child's 
good  or  bad  behavior  onto  the  parents,  in  the  public  mind,  is  an 
obvious  concern  to  the  parents.  The  vivacious  expressions  of 
children  are  unusually  favorable  to  exciting  sympathy.  The  per- 
fect dependence  of  the  child  on  his  guardians  calls  up  frequent 
imaginings  in  the  parent  of  the  pains  which  would  occur  to  the 
little  one  upon  any  relaxation  of  the  parental  care ;  and  the  idea  of 
power  over  another  person  has  become  agreeable  by  other  asso- 
ciations. Again,  we  imagine  in  Uvely  fashion  the  pleasures  which 
our  acts  of  beneficence  afford  and  so  when  we  have  frequently 
benefited  any  creature,  whether  a  fellow  man  or  a  lower  animal, 
that  creature  becomes  an  object  of  affection  to  us.  That  these  and 
similar  associations  make  up  parental  affection  is  demonstrated, 
he  thinks,  by  the  fact  that  just  as  strong  affection  may  be  de- 
veloped for  an  adopted  child  as  for  one's  own  offspring,  and  not 
infrequently,  for  various  reasons,  people  care  nothing  for  their 
own  children.  Family  affection,  he  says,  is  markedly  deficient  in 
families  of  extreme  poverty  or  of  very  great  opulence,  because  of 
the  unfavorable  associations  which  are  afforded  by  these  situa- 
tions.  In  the  mother  there  are  the  peculiar  associations  of  sen- 

^  Mill,  Analysis,  II,  p.  215. 


PSYCHOLOGY:   THE  TWO  MILLS  AND  BAIN  73 

sations  in  gestation  and  nursing,  along  with  her  knowledge  that 
the  infant  soon  connects  her  with  all  the  pleasures  it  is  capable  of 
enjoying.^ 

Bain  notes  that  several  other  sensational  elements  must  be 
considered,  as  of  touch  in  folding  and  embracing,  the  sensibilities 
of  the  tear  glands,  of  the  throat  or  larynx.  "The  pleasure  of 
Tender  Feeling  must  therefore  be  pronounced  to  have  an  inde- 
pendent standing  in  the  sentient  framework,  although  susceptible 
of  being  analyzed  into  the  primary  pleasures  of  the  senses,  to- 
gether with  the  influence  of  association,"  says  Bain.^ 

The  so-called  Moral  Sense,  or  regard  for  the  virtues  of  Pru- 
dence, Courage,  Justice  and  Benevolence,  is  analyzed  exhaus- 
tively in  one  of  the  final  chapters  (XXIII),  and  it  boils  down  to 
original  associations  of  sensuous  and  material  advantage  to  the 
agent  himself  from  his  own  prudence  and  courage,  and  from  the 
virtuous  conduct  of  others ;  also  to  revivals  of  pleasant  feeling  at 
the  perception  of  the  same  advantages  to  others  from  the  practice 
of  virtue  in  general.  The  motives  to  benevolence  are  not  confined 
to  the  hope  of  reciprocal  benefits  in  kind;  they  include  the  power- 
ful incentive  of  praise  from  our  fellows.  Praise  is  valued  orig- 
inally for  the  disposition  it  creates,  in  widening  circles,  among 
other  people  to  render  us  services,  but  by  constant  associations, 
as  in  so  many  other  cases  what  was  originally  means  to  an  end  be- 
comes sought  for  its  own  sake,  and  the  full  course  of  the  associa- 
tion is  forgotten  by  the  agent.  Such  is  the  case  in  the  inordinate 
love  of  fame  —  which  is  often  seen  —  and  in  the  desire  for  post- 
humous praise,  or  merely  to  be  praiseworthy,  which  are  often 
strong  enough  to  induce  a  person  to  sacrifice  his  life.  Mill  notices 
that  Adam  Smith  expatiates  on  this  last-named  motive  (praise- 
worthiness)  but  he  thinks  Smith  did  not  successfully  analyze  it.^ 
He  is  fully  sensible  of  the  great  part  which  social  approval  plays  in 
the  regulation  of  all  human  conduct,  from  the  nursery  onward, 
and  he  realizes  the  necessity  of  discriminating  use  of  it : 

When  Education  is  good,  no  point  of  morality  will  be  reckoned  of  more 
importance  than  the  distribution  of  Praise  and  Blame;  no  act  will  be  con- 
sidered more  immoral  than  the  misapplication  of  them.    They  are  the  great 

1  Mill,  Analysis,  II,  Ch.  XXI,  sec.  2. 

2  Ibid.,  II,  p.  232.  ^  Ibid.,  II,  pp.  294-298. 


74  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

instruments  we  possess  for  insuring  moral  acts  on  the  part  of  our  Fellow- 
creatures;  and  when  we  squander  them  away,  or  prostitute  those  great 
causes  of  virtue, — we  do  what  in  us  lies  to  lessen  the  quantity  of  Virtue  and 
thence  of  FeUcity,  in  the  world. ^ 

Bain  adds  a  long  note  (pp.  302-307)  saying  that  other  factors 
must  be  used  to  account  for  the  other-regarding  social  virtues 
than  associations  of  personal  egoistic  interests.  He  stresses  the 
influence  of  sympathy,  the  essence  of  which  is  "that  the  sight  of 
misery  in  others  prompts  us,  irrespective  of  our  own  interest,  to 
enter  into,  and  to  relieve,  that  misery."  But  sympathy  is  "not  an 
ultimate  law  of  the  mind."  It  is  just  one  case  of  "the  tendency  of 
every  idea  to  act  itself  out,  to  become  an  actuaHty,  not  with  a 
view  to  bring  pleasure  or  to  ward  off  pain  —  which  is  the  proper 
description  of  the  will  —  but  from  an  independent  prompting  of 
the  mind  that  often  makes  us  throw  away  pleasure  and  embrace 
pain."  -  Bain's  stress  on  the  Idee  fixe  was  doubtless  one  of  the 
early  chapters  in  the  history  of  that  vague  doctrine  of  '  ideomotor 
action  '  which  has  cropped  up  in  all  manner  of  anti-hedonist 
schools.  At  this  point  he  properly  emphasizes  the  effect  of  habits 
which  were  acquired  originally  under  the  governance  of  pleasure- 
pain,  which  influence,  as  we  have  seen,  James  Mill  had  not 
neglected. 

The  Will 

A  brief  notice  of  these  three  authors'  discussions  of  the  Will 
will  help  us  with  some  parts  of  the  modern  dissection  of  motives 
(Ch.  XXrV).  James  Mill's  account  is  essentially  that  of  Hartley, 
and  the  main  points  are  agreed  to  by  his  son  and  Bain.  The  Will 
to  them  is  the  state  of  mind  immediately  preceding  an  action,  — 
therefore  the  cause  of  the  action.  Now  some  actions,  says  Mill, 
follow  immediately  upon  sensations;  these  are  what  are  now 
called  reflexes,  or  simple  instincts.  Sneezing,  breathing,  dilation 
of  the  pupils,  movement  of  the  internal  muscles,  etc.,  he  mentions 
as  examples.  From  these  involuntary  sensation-movements  or 
reflexes  are  derived  by  association,  he  thinks,  actions  following 
ideas.  The  idea  of  the  pain  or  pleasure  which  resulted  from  an  act 
is  associated,  by  contiguity,  with  the  idea  of  the  sensation  which 

^  Mill,  Analysis,  II,  p.  300.  ^  /jjj.^  n^  p.  305. 


PSYCHOLOGY:   THE  TWO  MILLS  AND  BAIN  75 

gave  rise  to  the  act;  and  so  there  comes  about  the  possibility  of 
repeating  the  act  by  recalling  the  idea  of  it  without  experiencing 
the  original  stimulating  sensation.  Children  at  first  wink  their 
eyes  only  involuntarily,  from  painful  contacts  with  the  eyes;  but 
they  learn  to  wink  at  the  idea  of  pain,  suggested  by  the  threat  of  a 
contact. 

In  similar  fashion,  observation  of  the  performance  of  an  act 
which  we  have  once  performed  from  sensations  is  very  frequently 
a  stimulus  to  imitation  of  the  action. 

''There  is  more  or  less  of  a  propensity  to  imitation  in  all  men," 
Mill  says,  and  gives  numerous  examples.  But  by  propensity  he 
does  not  mean  what  we  call  instinct;  he  has  expressed  himself 
elsewhere  on  that  odious  synonym  for  intuition  or  innate  idea : 

When  Professor  Stewart,  therefore,  and  other  writers,  erect  it  (belief  in  the 
future)  into  an  object  of  wonder,  and  tell  us  they  can  refer  it  to  nothing  but 
instinct;  which  is  as  much  as  to  say,  to  nothing  at  aU;  the  term  instinct,  in  all 
cases,  being  a  name  for  nothing  but  their  own  ignorance;  they  only  confessing 
their  failure  in  tracing  the  phenomena  of  the  mind  to  the  grand  comprehen- 
sive law  of  association.! 

The  original  reflexes  and  the  quasi-automatic  acting-out  of 
ideas,  such  as  laughing  and  imitative  yawning,  are  all  involuntary. 
Curiously  enough  he  gives  as  an  example  of  involuntary  action 
the  same  illustration  which  William  James  used  to  refute  the  he- 
donistic theory  of  action: 

Shedding  tears  at  the  hearing  of  a  tragic  story,  we  do  not  desire  to  weep; 
laughing  at  the  recital  of  a  comic  story,  we  do  not  desire  to  laugh  .^ 

To  Mill  there  was  no  paradox  here;  it  is  the  voluntary  actions, 
those  directed  toward  a  conscious  end,  which  most  need  explain- 
ing, and  these  may  be  explained,  he  thought,  by  the  principles  of 
association  with  pleasure  and  pain. 

In  this  case  of  voluntary  action,  the  idea  of  a  pleasure  arises 
through  some  course  of  association;  such  a  represented  pleasure  is 
ipso  facto  a  desire.  It  in  turn  recalls  by  association  the  idea  of  an 
act  of  ours  which  would  procure  the  pleasure,  and  that  idea  is  im- 
mediately connected  with  a  stored-up  copy  of  the  sensation  which 
reflexly  produces  the  action.    Such  associations  are  formed  only 

!  Mill,  Analysis,  I,  Ch.  XI,  pp.  375,  376.  2  j^i^^^  jj^  p_  250. 


^6  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

slowly,  and  we  do  in  fact  only  very  gradually  acquire  voluntary 
command  over  our  muscles  through  practice,  which  strengthens 
the  associations  or  habits  that  make  up  the  learned  acts.  Now 
from  these  chains  of  associations,  Mill  and  Hartley  often  point 
out,  the  less  interesting  links  disappear  from  consciousness,  and  so 
when  William  James  asks  himself  why  he  is  writing,  he  can  trace 
no  introspective  cause  except  that  he  had  begun  and  finds  himself 
still  writing.  Bain  adds  some  observations  concerning  the  relation 
of  the  emotions  to  action,  the  learning  process,  and  illustrations  of 
the  fixed  idea  principle,  all  of  which  link  up  Mill's  account  with 
modern  views. 

Assuming  that  various  motives  are  developed,  then,  by  ex- 
periences of  pain  and  pleasure  and  recollection  of  them  and  the 
means  they  were  obtained  by.  Mill  goes  on  to  the  subject  of  con- 
flict of  motives.  The  relative  strength  of  different  motives  toward 
determining  our  action,  depends  on  the  principles  of  frequency, 
vividness,  etc.,  of  the  associations  which  make  up  the  motives. 
An  imprudent  action  is  one  in  which  the  better  motive  (that  which 
will  lead  to  a  final  net  gain  in  pleasure)  is  not  strongly  enough 
intrenched;  the  person  has  insufficient  knowledge,  or  has  it  not 
sufiiciently  impressed  upon  his  character  (Ch.  XXII).  J.  S.  Mill's 
note  explains  definitely: 

What  makes  the  one  or  the  other  (motive)  more  powerful,  is  (conform- 
ably to  the  general  laws  of  association)  partly  the  intensity  of  the  pleasur- 
able or  painful  ideas  in  themselves,  and  partly  the  frequency  of  repetition  of 
their  past  conjunction  with  the  act,  either  in  experience  or  in  thought.  In  the 
latter  of  these  two  consists  the  efficacy  of  education  in  giving  a  good  or  a  bad 
direction  to  the  active  power.  ^ 

We  find  no  mention  of  a  possible  felicific  calculus  in  James 
Mill's  psychology.  His  account  of  volition  shows  that  the  agent  is 
pushed  from  behind  by  the  associative  mechanism,  rather  than 
lured  into  action  by  a  quick  calculation  of  all  its  sensuous  con- 
sequences to  him.  But  these  two  conceptions  become  one,  when 
we  remember  that  part  of  the  associative  mechanism  may  become 
unconscious,  according  to  Mill,  and  so  the  agent  may  not  be  able 
to  trace  his  action  introspectively  to  considerations  of  pleasure  or 
pain,  although  it  is  in  fact  determined  by  the  original  reflexes  or 
^  Mill,  Analysis,  II,  p.  262  note. 


PSYCHOLOGY:   THE  TWO  MILLS  AND  BAIN  yy 

pleasures,  plus  their  accretions  of  associations,  —  by  '  calcula- 
tion,' that  is,  in  the  sense  of  the  rattling  off  of  a  chain  of  associa- 
tions. 

Transfer  of  Interest 

We  may  now  get  a  clearer  light  on  the  Utilitarian  psychology  as 
a  whole  by  considering  the  net  advance  of  John  Stuart  Mill  over 
his  father  and  Bentham,  as  to  the  doctrine  that  pleasure  and  pain 
are  the  instigators  of  all  action. 

One  of  the  principal  changes  made  by  John  Mill  in  the  utili- 
tarian theory,  it  will  be  remembered,  was  his  disavowal  of  Ben- 
tham's  dictum  that  "  amounts  of  pleasure  being  equal,  push-pin  is 
as  good  as  poetry,"  and  his  admission  of  a  hierarchy  among  pleas- 
ures.^ Jevons  followed  him  in  this  respect,^  but  Bain  considered 
the  concession  a  mistake,^  and  to  the  present  writer  the  question 
seems  far  from  closed.  But  putting  aside  the  question  of  ultimate 
good,  we  find  that  the  younger  Mill  was  at  one  with  the  earlier 
associationists  in  emphasizing  some  phases  of  the  hedonistic  ac- 
count which  are  now  usually  ignored,  but  which  give  the  Utili- 
tarian psychology  of  motives  a  very  different  aspect  than  that  in 
which  it  is  usually  presented. 

In  the  first  place,  as  we  have  seen,  they  conceded  the  existence 
of  numerous  innate  reflexes  which  have  the  automatic  character 
attributed  to  instincts,  and  which  operate  independently  of  any 
calculations  of  pleasure  and  of  any  foresight  and  pain.  Examples 
are  laughing,  crying,  sneezing,  winking,  continuing  pleasant  acts. 
Probably  they  underestimated  the  number  of  these  ready-made 
automatisms,  and  doubtless  Bentham's  '  simple  pleasures  '  make 
a  poor  Hst  of  instincts;  but  at  any  rate  all  the  associationists  did 
acknowledge  several  original  behavior-tendencies. 

In  the  next  place,  the  coercive  power  of  habit,  in  the  face 
of  changed  conditions  of  feeling-consequences,  and  the  related 
phenomenon  of  the  transfer  of  motivating  power  and  pleasure 
from  an  original  pleasant  end  to  the  means  whereby  that  end  has 
been  frequently  sought,  so  that  finally  this  motive  will  persist  in 
compelling  power  even  though  the  original  pleasures  have  faded 

*  See  his  Utilitarianism,  pp.  17  ff.  ^  Theory  of  Pol.  Econ.,  p.  25. 

'  J.  S.  Mill,  A  Criticism  (1882),  p.  113. 


78  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

away,  was  a  cardinal  point  in  the  associationist  doctrine  ever  since 
Hartley.  It  underlies  the  theory  of  indefinite  human  educability, 
which,  as  we  have  seen,  was  strenuously  expounded  by  Bentham; 
and  J.  S.  Mill  never  tired  of  exhibiting  this  psychological  principle 
and  relating  it  to  ethical  theory.  The  very  word  *  transfer,'  which 
is  now  the  favorite  term  of  the  Freudians  for  the  same  phe- 
nomenon, was  frequently  used  by  John  Mill  and  by  Bain,  while 
the  essential  facts  were  frequently  adverted  to  by  James  MiU, 
Hartley  and  even  Bentham.^  James  Mill  usually  illustrated  it  by 
the  acquired  passion  for  money,  but  he  also  taught  that  the  love  of 
power,  dignity,  fame,  and  persons  could  be  similarly  transferred, 
so  that  a  man  will  die  for  fame  or  for  a  beloved  person,  either  of 
which  was  originally  valued  by  him  as  a  means  to  some  pleasur- 
able ends,  but  have  become  ends  in  themselves.^   In  his  Logic, 

^  E.  g.,  the  statement  quoted  above,  "A  new  habit  is  easily  formed";  and  Ben- 
tham's  advocacy,  in  The  Rationale  of  Reward,  of  daily  wages  to  all  officials  of  the 
state,  for  the  sake  of  inculcating  pleasant  associations  with  the  scene  of  their  duty. 

^  See  Vol.  II,  pp.  215,  219,  266,  and  elsewhere.  Cf.  Hartley:  "It  is  also  worthy 
of  observation,  that  riches,  honor,  power,  learning,  and  all  other  things  that  are  con- 
sidered as  means  of  happiness,  become  means  and  ends  to  each  other  in  a  great 
variety  of  ways,  thus  transferring  upon  each  other  all  the  associated  pleasures  which 
they  collect  from  different  quarters.  .  .  ."  Human  Nature,  Priestley's  edition  of 
177s,  PP-  292-297. 

We  select  two  passages  out  of  many  from  the  writings  of  John  Mill: 

"This  portion  of  the  laws  of  human  nature  is  the  more  important  to  psychology, 
as  they  show  how  it  is  possible  that  the  moral  sentiments,  the  feelings  of  duty,  and  of 
moral  approbation  and  disapprobation,  may  be  no  original  elements  of  our  nature, 
and  may  yet  be  capable  of  being  not  only  more  intense  and  powerful  than  any  of  the 
elements  out  of  which  they  may  have  been  formed,  but  may  also,  in  their  maturity, 
be  perfectly  disinterested:  nothing  more  being  necessary  for  this,  than  that  the  ac- 
quired pleasure  and  pain  should  have  become  as  independent  of  the  native  elements 
from  which  they  are  formed,  as  the  love  of  wealth  and  of  power  not  only  often  but 
generally  become,  of  the  bodily  pleasures,  and  relief  from  bodily  pains,  for  the  sake 
of  which,  and  of  which  alone,  power  and  wealth  must  have  been  originally  valued. 
No  one  thinks  it  necessary  to  suppose  an  original  and  inherent  love  of  money  or  of 
power;  yet  these  are  the  objects  of  two  of  the  strongest,  most  general,  and  most  per- 
sistent passions  of  human  nature;  passions  which  often  have  quite  as  little  reference 
to  pleasure  or  pain,  beyond  the  mere  consciousness  of  possession,  and  are  in  that 
sense  of  the  word  quite  as  disinterested,  as  the  moral  feelings.  ..."  —  Note  in 
J.  Mill's  Analysis,  Vol.  II,  p.  234. 

"To  do  as  one  would  be  done  by  and  to  love  one's  neighbor  as  oneself  constitute 
the  ideal  perfection  of  utilitarian  moraUty.  As  the  means  of  making  the  nearest  apn 
proach  to  this  ideal,  utility  would  enjoin,  first  that  laws  and  social  arrangements 


PSYCHOLOGY:   THE  TWO  MILLS  AND  BAIN  jg 

Mill  also  criticizes  the  Bentham  school  of  politics  for  considering 
rulers  to  be  governed  wholly  by  narrow  self-interest.  Rulers' 
actions  are  determined,  not  only  in  some  degree  by  a  sense  of  duty 
and  philanthropy,  but  quite  largely  by  convention  and  tradition. 
Mill  says,  "and  no  one  will  understand  or  be  able  to  decipher 
their  system  of  conduct  who  does  not  take  all  these  things  into 
account."  ^  The  Utilitarians,  therefore,  were  not  at  a  loss  for  an 
answer  to  the  old  objection  to  hedonism,  that  people  are  con- 
stantly doing  things  in  which  they  have  no  pleasure.  We  may  find 
that  their  answer  was  inadequate,  but  at  this  stage  we  may  ab- 
solve them  from  the  imputation  of  ridiculous  blindness  to  ideal 
motives,  which  has  been  foisted  on  them  by  their  more  '  idealistic  ' 
ethical  opponents. 

No  one  who  has  considered  the  facts  of  association  or  of 
habit-formation,  moreover,  should  hold  that  the  appearance  of 
'  artificial  simplification  '  is  any  indication  that  the  associationist- 
hedonist  explanation  of  conduct  is  a  false  one.^  So  is  the  explana- 
tion that  water  is  made  up  of  two  gases  an  artificial  simplification; 
and  any  psychological  analysis  of  the  full-grown  human  impulses 
must  be  uimaturally  simple-appearing  or  else  useless.  The  at- 
tractiveness of  McDougall's  scheme  of  elementary  instincts,  as 
compared  with  the  associationists'  scheme,  has  been  partly  in  the 
congenial  and  life-like  aspect  which  the  former  presents;  those 

should  place  the  happiness  or  (as  speaking  practically  it  may  be  called)  the  interest 
of  every  individual  as  nearly  as  possible  in  harmony  with  the  interest  of  the  whole; 
and  secondly  that  education  and  opinion,  which  have  so  vast  a  power  over  human 
character,  should  so  use  that  power  as  to  establish  in  the  mind  of  every  individual  an 
indissoluble  association  between  his  own  happiness  and  the  good  of  the  whole,  espe- 
cially between  his  own  happiness  and  the  practice  of  such  modes  of  conduct,  nega- 
tive and  positive  as  regard  for  the  universal  happiness  prescribes;  so  that  not  only  he 
may  be  unable  to  conceive  the  possibility  of  happiness  to  himself  consistent  with  con- 
duct opposed  to  the  general  good,  but  also  that  a  direct  impulse  to  promote  the  gen- 
eral good  may  be  in  every  individual  one  of  the  habitual  motives  of  action  and  the 
sentiments  connected  therewith  may  fill  a  large  and  prominent  place  in  every  human 
being's  sentient  existence."  —  Utilitarianism,  pp.  38,  39.  Cf.  Logic,  Bk.  VI,  ch.  ii, 
sec.  4. 

"■  Logic,  Bk.  VI,  ch.  viii,  sec.  3. 

^  Wesley  Mitchell,  for  instance,  thinks  that  no  more  need  be  said  to  discredit  it 
(Bentham's  FeHcific  Calculus,  p.  183),  and  many  other  refutations  are  based  on  this 
common-sense  incredulity. 


8o  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

*  instincts  '  of  his  are  very  much  like  the  adult  motives  which  we 
recognize  from  introspection,  and  which  to  introspection  appear 
simple  and  unanalyzable.  Contrariwise,  because  we  so  often  find 
ourselves  reasoning  we  incline  to  accuse  McDougall  of  over- 
simplification because  he  does  not  make  reason  an  element  in 
motives.  Of  course  the  real  question  between  McDougall  and  the 
associationists  is  whether  the  units  McDougall  uses  are  really  in- 
nate units  which  are  not  due  to  individual  experience,  and  which 
cannot  be  broken  up  by  artificial  associations.  If  it  should  prove 
that  the  true  instinctive  cores  of  human  motives  are  much  simpler 
than  the  functional  psychology  has  represented,  and  that  these 
units  are  organized  by  experience  on  associative  principles,  then 
we  may  find  the  associationists  to  be  nearer  right  than  the 
functionalists. 

It  is  hoped  that  we  have  now  a  more  accurate  idea  of  what 
utilitarian  or  hedonist '  intellectuaHsm  '  was,  so  far  as  motives  are 
concerned,  than  we  should  gain  by  reading  merely  the  current 
social  psychologies,  or  secondary  works.  We  shall  turn  next  to  the 
more  recent  discussions  of  these  psychological  questions,  and  we 
shall  not  neglect  to  inquire  how  far  the  dynamic  psychology  of  the 
Mills  in  its  larger  aspects,  has  actually  been  exploded.  The  result 
will  contribute  something  toward  an  evaluation  of  the  psy- 
chological foundations  of  our  modern  economic  theory,  which  as 
our  critics  have  said,  seem  to  be  largely  identical  with  the  assump- 
tions underlying  the  classical  economics. 


PART  II 

THE  PSYCHOLOGICAL  ANALYSIS  OF 
MOTIVES 


CHAPTER  VII 

THE  NEWER  POINT  OF  VIEW  IN  PSYCHOLOGY 

The  Physiological  and  Behavior  Emphasis 

We  pass  now  to  more  recent  theories  on  the  nature  and  relation- 
ship of  our  motive-elements,  —  instincts,  reason  and  so  on. 

To  account  for  our  selection  of  material  from  the  vast  archives 
of  scientific  psychology,  a  few  remarks  may  be  useful  as  to  the 
newer  point  of  view  which  has  been  coming  into  this  science  since 
the  days  of  the  associationists,  —  namely,  the  biological,  physi- 
ological, or  behavior  point  of  view. 

The  older  psychologists  held  that  when  one  '  idea  '  (i.  e.,  mental 
state)  is  uniformly  found  immediately  to  be  followed  by  another 

*  idea,'  the  first  is  to  be  considered  the  cause  of  the  second;  and 
that  the  principal  task  of  psychology  was  to  seek  for  such  se- 
quences.^ Many  of  them,  moreover,  believed  that  '  mind  '  has  a 
ghostly  existence  of  its  own,  only  partially  tied  down  to  the  body; 
and  consequently  their  chief  concern  was  with  introspective 

*  analysis  of  consciousness.' 

The  increasing  modern  tendency,  however,  is  toward  the 
hypothesis  that  "mental  action,"  as  William  James  expressed  it, 
is  "uniformly  and  absolutely  a  function  of  brain-action  [or  rather, 
let  us  say,  of  the  whole  neuro-muscular  response-mechanism], 
varying  as  the  latter  varies,  and  being  to  the  brain-action  as 
effect  to  cause."  ^  The  old  doctrine  of  interaction,  which  held 
that '  the  mind,'  by  its  volitions,  frequently  suspends  the  physico- 
chemical  laws  of  the  body,  is  now  defended  by  but  few  psy- 
chologists, because  it  conflicts  with  too  many  of  our  more  firmly 
established  beliefs  concerning  the  conservation  of  energy  in  the 
universe  at  large,  and  also  because  the  proportion  of  facts  about 
mental  life  which  fits  the  above  mechanistic  hypothesis  is  con- 
stantly increasing. 

1  See  Mill's  Logic,  Bk.  VI,  ch.  iv.  *  Briefer  Course,  p.  6. 

83 


84  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

Many  authorities  still  prefer  not  to  speak  of  neural  action  as 
the  '  cause  '  of  mental  phenomena,  to  be  sure;  they  use  such  terms 
as  psychophysical  parallelism  or  the  double  aspect  of  experience ; 
but  nearly  always  they  concede  that,  on  the  one  hand,  no  con- 
sciousness ever  occurs  without  a  certain  concurrent  nerve-action, 
but  on  the  other  hand,  numerous  nerve  processes  do  occur  with- 
out effecting  any  immediate  modification  of  consciousness.  These 
latter  unconscious  nerve  processes,  however,  often  do  help  to 
determine  later  states  of  consciousness  in  a  way  quite  mysterious 
to  the  subject,  as  when  a  person  in  hypnosis  remembers  details  of 
a  strange  house  which  had  escaped  his  waking  attention,  or  a 
neurotic  suffers  an  obsession  on  account  of  some  long-forgotten 
experience,  or  when  the  name  we  had  vainly  tried  hours  ago  to 
recall  suddenly  slips  into  our  mind.  It  becomes  probable,  in 
other  words,  that  any  momentary  consciousness  is  fully  explicable 
only  by  the  history  of  the  subject's  nervous  system,  and  not  by 
any  record  of  his  past  mental  states.^ 

There  is,  therefore,  a  growing  disposition  to  regard  the  formula- 
tion of  a  mental  function  which  runs  in  physiological  terms,  as  a 
more  fundamental  explanation  than  the  merely  '  psychological ' 
statement  which  confines  itself  chiefly  to  introspective  appear- 
ances or  to  gross  bodily  behavior.    From  this  point  of  view,  a 

^  Titchener,  A  Beginner's  Psychology  (1915),  p.  96:  "It  is  quite  certain  that 
nervous  forces  or  tendencies  —  think  of  the  force  of  habit!  —  may  guide  and  direct  the 
course  of  our  thoughts,  even  though  they  do  not  themselves  contribute  to  thought,  even 
though  (that  is)  they  have  no  sensory  or  imaginal  correlates,"  p.  248:  "The  actor, 
oftentimes,  cannot  make  his  action  plausible,  even  to  himself,  when  he  tries  to  state 
his  '  reasons ' :  but  the  sympathetic  historian  can  trace  the  influence  of  tendencies 
which  had  no  mental  correlates,  and  whose  existence  was  therefore  unsuspected  by 
their  possessor."  Woodworth,  Dynamic  Psychology  (1918),  p.  35:  "Consciousness 
is  not  a  coherent  system,  because  much  of  the  process  that  is  partly  revealed  in  con- 
sciousness goes  on  below  the  threshold  of  consciousness." 

A  strong  modern  champion  of  interaction  is  McDougall,  Body  and  Mind,  who 
almost  converted  Stout  from  parallelism.  See  the  latter's  lengthy  examination  of  the 
two  hj^otheses  in  his  Manual  of  Psychology  (3d  edition,  1913),  Introduction,  Ch. 
III. 

Some  of  the  behaviorists  think  they  solve  the  riddle  of  mind  and  body  by  "Epi- 
stemological  Monism,"  i.  e.,  the  doctrine  that  consciousness  is  the  response  itself. 
See  James,  Essays  in  Radical  Empiricism;  and  Holt,  The  Freudian  Wish,  pp.  172  flf., 
and  The  Concept  of  Consciousness.  As  Santayana  points  out,  this  is  merely  an  in- 
verted metaphysical  idealism.    If  it  be  objected  that  our  inability  to  define  con- 


NEWER  POINT  OF  VIEW  IN  PSYCHOLOGY  85 

characterization  of  any  given  instinct,  for  instance,  in  terms  of  the 
stimuH  and  the  reflex  circuits,  etc.,  involved  in  the  response, 
is  more  thoroughgoing  and  fruitful  than  any  description  of  the 
emotional  excitement  which  attends  the  instinct's  exercise,  or  any 
statement  of  the  end  toward  which  the  creature  feels  himself  to  be 
striving.  It  is  believed  that  the  nerve  processes  underlying  the 
psychic  functions,  besides  being  more  continuous  and  funda- 
mental than  the  latter,  are  also  more  open  than  these  to  many- 
sided,  dispassionate  examination  by  ocular,  chemical  and  other 
tests,  so  that  the  psychological  laws  which  use  physiological 
analysis  are  more  difficult  for  myths  to  inhabit  than  those  which 
run  in  terms  of  unstandardized  '  ideas  '  and  '  purposes.' 

The  '  behavior  '  movement  extends  this  newer  attitude  to  the 
proposition  that  psychology's  chief  value  is  to  explain  how  and 
why  people  act,  to  the  end  that  their  actions  may  be  more  intelli- 
gently controlled.  Experiments  with  carefully  arranged  stimuli, 
and  observations  of  the  responses  and  their  physiological  mech- 
anisms, are  mainly  relied  on  for  such  a  science,  and  evidence  from 
the  subject's  consciousness  is  much  less  relied  upon. 

Place  of  Animal  Psychology 

This  shift  in  emphasis  explains  the  great  amount  of  attention 
now  given  to  comparative  and  '  animal '  psychology ;  for  if  we  do 
not  confine  ourselves  to  introspective  evidence,  the  evolutionary 
or  genetic  approach  has  the  same  advantages,  in  the  way  of  be- 
ginning with  simpler  problems,  in  the  complex  subject  of  motives 
that  it  has  in  biology  or  physiology.  The  responses  of  simple  or- 
ganisms to  a  few  stimuli  in  their  environment  are  motives  of  a 
simple  kind.  Some  behaviorists,  as  Watson  and  Holt,  are  for  dis- 
carding all  subjective  evidence;  but  the  moderate  and  more 
general  view  is  that  consciousness  is  a  valuable  indication  of 
many  physiological  states  and  responses  which  are  too  obscure  to 
be  observable  by  other  methods  at  present.^    We  do  desire,  as 

sciousness  in  terms  other  than  itself  throws  doubt  on  the  validity  of  all  physiological 
psychology,  the  reply  is  that  our  knowledge  of  the  conditions  of  its  production,  as  in 
the  case  of  electricity,  constitutes  a  partial  acquaintance  with  its  nature  which  is  as 
real  as  is  our  acquaintance  by  introspection,  and  which  now  promises  more  power 
to  control  mental  phenomena.  1  Cf.  Woodworth,  op.  cit.,  Ch.  II. 


86  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

Jevons  said,  to  maximize  the  agreeable  states  of  feeling,  but  the 
behaviorists  would  retort  that  this  is  only  to  say  that  we  want 
what  we  want,  which  is  what  we  can  be  seen  by  an  outside  ob- 
server to  choose. 

It  will  be  apparent  that  these  methods  and  kinds  of  evidence 
have  always  been  used  in  some  degree  by  all  psychologists.  Some 
physiology  and  some  reference  to  the  lower  animals,  some  formu- 
lation of  stimulus  and  response,  is  familiar  since  Aristotle;  and 
Bain,  Spencer  and  William  James  especially  used  quite  shrewdly 
all  the  physiological  knowledge  which  was  at  their  disposal.  But 
it  remains  true  that  comparative  and  evolutionary  psychology 
has  become  especially  prominent  in  the  last  generation  through 
such  leaders  as  Baldwin,  Hobhouse,  McDougall  and  Dewey;  and 
the  strict  attention  to  neural  mechanisms  has  been  peculiarly 
characteristic  of  a  group  of  workers  inspired  by  James,  such  as 
Thorndike,  Yerkes,  Watson,  Dunlap,  Woodworth,  and  Holt. 
The  present  writer  believes,  in  accordance  with  the  considerations 
set  forth  above,  that  close  attention  to  the  biological  aspects  of 
motives  is  the  most  effective  preventive  of  myth-making,  and  so 
we  shall  use  evidence  and  concepts  which  are  more  familiar  to  the 
two  last-mentioned  groups  of  authorities,  than  to  the  hitherto 
dominant  but  more  preponderantly  introspective  schools  of 
Wundt,  Stout  and  Titchener.  It  is  not  so  much  a  matter  of  con- 
flict between  these  classes  of  authorities,  as  of  emphasis  and  pro- 
portion. 

The  Freudian  school,  so  far,  is  strongly  introspective  and  out 
of  touch  with  modern  exact  psychological  methods,  but  its  own 
methods  and  conclusions  are  so  suggestive  on  the  subject  of  mo- 
tives that  we  are  bound  to  consider  them  carefully.^ 

Any  reader  who  is  interested  in  the  sociological  writers,  such  as 
Tarde,  Le  Bon,  and  Giddings,  will  notice  that  McDougall's  is  the 

^  Some  interesting  observations  on  the  above  topics  are  contained  in  H.  W. 
Chase's  "Psychology  and  Social  Science,"  Am.  Jour.  Psy.,  28:  216-228  (1917).  He 
argues  that  social  science  must  turn  to  the  behaviorists,  in  the  moderate  sense,  for  a 
solid  psychological  foundation.  See  also  E.  S.  Abbott,  "The  Biological  Point  of 
View  in  Psychology,"  Psy.  Rev.  23:  117-128  (1916).  The  first  two  lectures  of  the 
excellent  little  book  by  Woodworth  above  mentioned  give  a  brief  and  impartial  ac- 
count of  the  various  movements  in  psychology.   Woodworth  emphasizes  that  the 


NEWER  POINT  OF  VIEW  IN  PSYCHOLOGY  87 

only  professed  'social  psychology  '  to  which  we  refer.  We  do  not 
doubt  the  great  value  of  these  other  social  psychologies,  but  the 
chief  need  of  investigation  at  present  appeared  to  us  to  be  on  the 
fundamentals  of  individual  motives,  which  are  the  instincts  and 
the  principles  of  learning.  What  the  environmental  and  social 
factors  are,  which  do  normally  contribute  to  our  characters,  make 
a  large  subject  for  further  investigation,  and  in  that  connection 
these  sociological  works  could  not  be  ignored.  All  of  them,  how- 
ever, need  some  pruning  by  the  results  of  the  researches  we  have 
consulted,  for  they  have  used  assumptions  concerning  instincts, 
habits,  reason,  and  feeling,  which  are  obsolete  in  present-day 
psychology,  or  are  fast  becoming  so. 

Outline  of  the  '  Behavior  Situation  ' 

Now  let  us  recall  the  outstanding  facts  concerning  the  "be- 
havior situation,"  as  Professor  Holt  calls  it.  The  living  organism, 
be  it  amoeba  or  man,  is  a  mechanism  which  manufactures  from 
its  food  certain  organic  chemical  compounds  which  are  analogous 
to  explosives,  in  that  when  they  are  suddenly  disintegrated  by 
appropriate  stimuli,  they  release  a  quantity  of  energy  which  is 
large  in  proportion  to  the  energy  of  the  stimulus.  These  com- 
pounds are  stored  by  nutrition  in  all  the  living  cells,  including  the 
neurons  or  nerve-cells,  though  it  is  the  muscle-cells  which  spe- 
cialize in  the  discharge  of  the  kinetic  energy  which  produces  gross 
bodily  movements.  The  nervous  system  (or  its  analogues  in  the 
lowest  creatures)  coordinates  the  activities  of  the  body  —  of  its 
separate  parts  with  each  other,  and  of  the  whole  body  with  its 
environment  —  by  means  of  a  multitude  of  reflex  arcs,  or  reflex 
nerve  circuits. 

The  reflex  circuit  in  its  simplest  form  is  a  sensory  neuron  or 
nerve,  terminating  in  an  end-organ  or  receptor  (as  in  the  eye,  for 

aim  of  the  science  is  and  always  has  been  to  understand  the  "workings  of  the  mind," 
i.  e.,  "how  we  learn  and  think  and  what  leads  people  to  feel  and  act  as  they  do."  It 
is  a  question,  he  says,  of  the  djmamics,  or  of  the  chains  of  cause  and  effect.  Watson 
expounds  the  view  that  psychology's  mission  is  only  to  promote  the  control  of  be- 
havior, in  his  Behavior,  An  Introduction  to  Comparative  Psychology  (1914),  and  in 
"An  Attempted  Formulation  of  Behavior  Psychology,"  Psy.  Rev.  24:  329-352 
(1917). 


88  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

example)  which  contams  a  substance  sensitive  to  a  particular  ob- 
jective stimulus,  such  as  light-waves  or  sound-waves  or  certain 
chemical  or  tactual  effects.  Upon  the  reception  of  a  stimulus, 
the  sensory  neuron  discharges  some  of  its  liberated  energy  into  a 
connective  neuron  in  the  central  nervous  system  (spinal  cord  and 
brain),  and  this  impulse  explodes  the  central  neuron  which  in  turn 
gives  an  impulse  to  the  motor  neuron  that  is  in  contact  with  the 
muscle-cell.  Probably  no  circuit  as  simple  as  this  actually  exists  in 
the  human  body,  for  the  central  nervous  system  is  a  maze  of  bil- 
lions of  neural  fibers  which  almost  bewilders  the  physiologists. 
Between  the  sensory  and  motor  neurons  there  may  intervene  a 
number  of  central  cells,  as  the  latter  usually  have  several  branches 
and  are  links  in  several  systems  at  the  same  time.  Thus  the  im- 
pulse from  a  single  sense-organ  may  be  transmitted  simulta- 
neously to  several  motor  nerves  or  to  but  one  out  of  a  group  of 
possible  destinations.  Conversely,  several  stimuH  may  be  de- 
livered to  one  motor  tract,  reinforcing  one  another.  But  in  spite 
of  such  complications,  all  behavior  is  believed  to  be  analyzable 
into  combinations  of  reflex  circuits  identical  in  principle  with  the 
simple  one  above  described. 

These  ramifying  circuits  determine  the  creature's  behavior  ac- 
cording to  the  stimuli  which  reach  him;  taken  together  they  con- 
stitute his  '  action  system.'  The  location  and  functioning  of  the 
sensory  and  motor  neurons  are  relatively  fixed  and  xmchangeable, 
like  fingers  and  toes,  and  some  of  the  central  connections  are  too, 
as  those  of  reflexes  such  as  the  knee-jerk  or  sneezing.  Every  or- 
ganism has  some  complex  circuits  provided  ready-made  by  hered- 
ity which  take  care  of  him  in  the  situations  usual  to  his  kind; 
these  are  the  machinery  of  his  reflexes  and  instincts.  And  all  or- 
ganisms are  capable  of  some  amount  of  learning,  that  is,  of  acquir- 
ing responses  in  addition  to,  or  superseding,  their  instinctive 
actions  in  certain  situations.  Learning  evidently  involves  the 
forming  of  new  connections  within  the  central  nervous  '  ex- 
change.' The  extent  and  peculiarities  of  these  instinctive  mech- 
anisms, and  the  principles  of  learning  or  of  habit-formation,  are 
the  fundamental  problems  of  modern  psychology. 


NEWER  POINT  OF  VIEW  IN  PSYCHOLOGY  89 

Relation  of  Behavior  to  Consciousness 

But  how  are  we  to  connect  facts  of  this  nature  with  the  facts  of 
consciousness?  Since  we  do  not  believe  in  losing  sight  of  the 
evidence  from  introspection,  we  consider  it  advisable  to  link  the 
two  together  as  intelligibly  as  possible.  We  must  beware  of  mak- 
ing important  results  depend  on  any  particular  theory,  because  no 
theory  is  well  established  as  yet,  but  it  will  be  helpful  to  us  if  we 
have  a  tentative  working  hypothesis.  The  most  probable  hypoth- 
esis seems  to  be  (i)  that  consciousness  is  made  up  entirely  of 
sensations  and  images;  (2)  that  sensations  are  constantly  corre- 
lated with  definite  responses  or  reflex  circuits;  and  (3)  that 
images  are  correlated  with  these  same  responses  when  the  latter 
are  stimulated  to  a  low  degree  of  activity,  —  when  they  are  in- 
cipient or  implicit  responses,  as  some  of  the  behaviorists  would 
say. 

Let  us  expound  and  defend  this  hypothesis  a  little  further.  We 
assume,  it  is  seen,  the  general  doctrine  of  sensationalism,  i.  e.,  that 
sensations  are  the  original  source  of  all  mental  experience.  That 
question  is  highly  controversial,  but  Titchener  brings  a  host  of 
other  authorities  to  our  support.^  Now  it  is  no  longer  plausible 
to  psychologists  that  a  neural  impulse  merely  comes  to  the  brain 
from  the  sense-organs,  produces  there  a  sensation,  and  then 
lingers  in  some  ante-room  until  the  brain  decides  what  to  do  about 
it.     As  Watson  says: 

So  far  as  we  know  no  such  thing  occurs.  The  nervous  system  functions  in 
complete  arcs.  An  incoming  impulse  exerts  its  effect  relatively  immediately 
upon  one  system  of  effectors  or  another,  as  shown  by  inhibition,  reinforce- 
ment, summation  phenomena  in  the  muscle  in  question,  or  by  inciting  wholly 
new  effectors  to  activity.^ 

William  James  taught  long  ago  that  all  consciousness  is  con- 
joined with  some  kind  of  complete  reflex  arcs  or  movement,^  and 
this  doctrine  has  become  probably  the  most  common  one.  The 
incoming,  or  afferent,  impulse  makes  its  way  outward  and  thereby 

^  See  his  Experimental  Psychology  of  the  Thought  Processes  (1909). 
2  J.  B.  Watson,  Behavior,  an  Introduction  to  Comparative  Psychology  (1914), 
p.  19. 

^  See  Briefer  Course,  Ch.  XXIII,  on  "Consciousness  and  Movement." 


90  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

produces  some  sort  of  response,  though  not  necessarily  a  response 
which  can  be  detected  by  crude  observation.  The  sensation- 
consciousness,  therefore,  is  known  simply  to  be  a  correlate  of  the 
whole  response,  not  yet  of  any  one  part  of  it. 

Some  difficulty  may  be  felt  with  the  hypothesis,  however,  in 
the  case  of  quiet  thought.  Where  are  the  reflexes  underlying  this 
kind  of  consciousness?  The  answer  is  that  thought  is  (as  the  sen- 
sationalist believes)  a  series  of  images,  or  faint  reproductions  of 
past  sensations,  intermingled  always  with  some  actual  sensations 
from  present  stimulations  of  the  thinker's  body.  Now  we  sup- 
pose, in  common  with  Watson,  Holt  and  others,  that  these  ideas  or 
rather  images  are  correlated  with  slight  innervations  (initiated  at 
some  remove  by  peripheral  stimulation  and  spreading  thence  by 
'  association  '  within  the  central  nervous  system)  of  the  central 
tracts  and  responses  in  muscles  or  glands,  which  innervations  are 
not  intense  enough  to  bring  about  '  overt '  action,  but  which  do 
cause  tonicity  or  a  slight  tension  and  readiness  to  respond.  Thus 
your  thoughts  which  are  verbal  are  accompanied  (we  assume)  by 
slight  responses  of  the  vocal  apparatus,  larynx,  tongue,  etc.  This 
tension  causes  many  people  to  experience  fatigue  in  the  throat  at 
hearing  music,  especially  singing,  and  one  always  hears  better  a 
proper  name  after  he  has  already  pronounced  and  learned  how  to 
spell  it.  If  you  merely  imagine  the  appearance  of  the  sun,  the 
slight  response  is  presumably  in  whatever  neuro-muscular  system 
was  active  when  you  did  actually  see  it  in  a  contemplative  atti- 
tude. If  you  are  hungry  and  think  of  your  favorite  food,  the 
incipient  flow  of  saliva  is  easily  detected.  The  evidence  of  this 
correlation  of  images  with  '  implicit  behavior  '  is  still  roundabout 
and  fragmentary,  but  it  rounds  out  intelligibly  the  view  that 
some  kind  of  response,  or  at  least  of  neural  activity,  accompanies 
all  consciousness,  and  it  is  acquiring  considerable  psychological 
authority.^   It  is  really  only  the  central  nervous  action  which  we 

^  See  Watson,  op.  cit.,  pp.  i6ff.  He  says  "Where  explicit  behavior  is  delayed 
(i.  e.,  where  deliberation  ensues),  the  intervening  time  between  the  stimulus  and 
response  is  given  over  to  implicit  behavior  (to  '  thought  processes  ')••••  The 
larynx  and  tongue  we  believe  are  the  loci  of  most  of  the  phenomena."  Cf.  Holt, 
op.  cit.,  pp.  60  ff.,  98  and  Supplement.  C.  Judson  Herrick,  the  eminent  neurologist, 
also  gives  some  support  to  the  view:  "No  part  of  the  nervous  system  has  any  signif- 


NEWER  POINT  OF  VIEW  IN  PSYCHOLOGY  9I 

assume  to  be  indispensable  to  the  production  of  sensations  or 
images,  we  are  not  bound  to  any  particular  degree  of  incipient 
response.  The  usefulness  of  a  hypothesis  of  the  foregoing  sort 
will  become  especially  evident  when  we  consider  the  problems  of 
Reasoning. 

So  much,  then,  for  a  bird's-eye  view  of  the  elementary  appara- 
tus of  motives.  The  details,  it  is  hoped,  will  become  more  intel- 
ligible as  we  proceed. 

icance  apart  from  the  peripheral  receptor  and  effector  apparatus  with  which  it  is 
functionally  related.  This  is  true  not  only  of  the  nervous  mechanism  of  all  phys- 
iological functions,  but  even  of  the  centers  concerned  with  the  highest  manifesta- 
tions of  thought  and  feeling  of  which  we  are  capable,  for  the  most  abstract  mental 
processes  use  as  their  necessary  instruments  the  data  of  sensory  experience  directly 
or  indirectly,  and  in  many,  if  not  all,  cases  are  intimately  bound  up  with  some  form 
of  peripheral  expression."  (Introduction  to  Neurology  (1915),  p.  27.  Cf.  also 
Knight  Dunlap,  "Thought  Content  and  Feeling,"  Psy.  Rev.  23:  49-70  and  his  Out- 
line of  Psychobiology  (1914);  as  well  as  E.  C.  Tolman,  "Nerve  Process  and  Cogni- 
tion," Psy.  Rev.  25:  423-444  (1918).  Thorndike's  view  is  similar.  He  says  the 
observable  motor  responses  "are  soon  outnumbered  by  those  productive,  directly 
and  at  the  time,  of  only  the  inner,  concealed  responses  in  the  neurones  themselves  to 
which  what  we  call  sensations,  intellectual  attention,  images,  ideas,  judgments,  and 
the  like,  are  due."  —  Educ.  Psy.,  Vol.  II,  p.  54. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

INSTINCTS,  APTITUDES  AND  APPETITES,  IN   GENERAL 

Development  of  Theory 

Probably  an  undue  proportion  of  attention  has  been  given  to  the 
human  instincts,  in  discussions  of  motives  or  social  psychology 
written  within  the  last  thirty  years.  A  distinct  reaction  is  setting 
in  toward  emphasis  on  the  plasticity  or  teachability  of  human 
nature,  which  sets  us  so  far  apart  from  the  lower  animals,  —  an 
emphasis  that  was  also  characteristic  of  the  association  psy- 
chology. This  newer  associationism  will  be  outlined  in  Chapters 
XI  to  XIII. 

The  prominence  given  to  the  instinctive  elements  in  human 
behavior  in  recent  discussions,  however,  calls  for  a  critical  eval- 
uation of  them;  and  indeed  there  are  many  points  of  social  theory 
at  which  our  present  knowledge  of  instincts  can  well  be  used. 
More  extended  and  definite  use,  we  believe,  however,  must  wait 
on  advancement  of  the  psychological  theory.  The  reader  is  pre- 
sumably interested  chiefly  in  an  enumeration  of  the  original  human 
impulses,  but  the  problems  presented  by  instincts  in  general  must 
be  faced  before  the  value  of  any  given  inventory  can  be  appre- 
ciated. 

An  historical  accoimt  of  the  doctrines  of  instinct  could  be  fitted 
quite  neatly  into  Comte's  theological-metaphysical-positive 
formula,  particularly  if  we  looked  primarily  at  the  inferences 
drawn  from  the  phenomena  of  instinct.  As  to  the  phenomena 
themselves,  and  the  supposed  mechanics  of  them,  there  has  been 
surprisingly  little  change  in  theory  during  the  past  three  or  four 
centuries.  It  has  been  believed  all  along  that  the  instincts,  both 
of  the  lower  animals  and  of  men,  operate  by  means  of  curming 
physiological  clock-works,  providentially  provided,  which  cause  a 
creature  to  make  adaptive  and  appropriate  reactions  to  the  im- 
portant objects  in  his  environment. 


INSTINCTS,  APTITUDES  AND  APPETITES  93 

The  main  dispute  has  always  been  on  the  extent  of  such  auto- 
matic action ;  in  other  words,  as  to  how  much  brutes  reason  and 
how  far  men  are  creatures  of  instinct.  Descartes,  of  course,  held 
that  the  lower  animals  are  complete  automata,  and  such  has  long 
been  the  popular  view;  but  philosophers  like  Buffon,  Erasmus 
Darwin,  Helvetius  and  Hume  championed  animal  lovers  in  their 
conviction  that  dumb  brutes  frequently  act  from  reason  just  as  do 
men,  and  that  they  have  analogous  pleasures  and  pains.  "No 
truth,"  says  Hume,  "appears  to  me  more  evident,  than  that 
beasts  are  endow'd  with  thought  and  reason  as  well  as  men."  ^ 
The  Scottish  philosopher  Reid,  as  we  have  remarked,  gave  much 
attention  to  the  human  instincts,  in  the  interests  of  his  doctrines 
on  intuitions  of  the  moral  sense,  existence  of  the  external  world 
and  the  hke.  A  follower  of  his,  Thomas  Hancock,  M.D.,  pub- 
lished in  1824  a  thick  volume  called  An  Essay  on  Instinct  and  its 
Physical  and  Moral  Relations  (London),  in  which  the  imperfect 
human  reason  is  contrasted  with  the  wonderfully  accurate  guid- 
ance of  divinely  provided  instincts;  and  the  existence  of  a  moral 
instinct  is  inferred.  Numerous  illustrations  of  instinctive  actions, 
brute  and  human,  are  there  collected,  many  of  them  quoted  from 
Reid.   Pope's  couplet  appears  on  the  frontispiece : 

For  Reason  raise  o'er  Instinct,  as  you  can; 
In  this  'tis  God  directs,  in  that  'tis  man. 

This  contrast  between  rational  or  intelhgent  action,  in  which 
the  agent  utilizes  the  lessons  of  his  past  experience  and  *  puts  two 
and  two  together,'  or  draws  inferences,  on  the  one  hand,  and  blind 
automatic  action,  stereotyped  or  uniform  for  a  whole  species, 
clearly  not  learned  from  experience  yet  always  tending  to  pre- 
serve the  creature  and  his  race,  has  therefore  been  a  conventional 
topic  for  some  centuries.  Comparative  psychologists  are  still  far 
from  agreed  as  to  the  extent  of  instinct  in  man  and  of  reason  in 
brutes,  but  careful  observation  of  human  phenomena  will  pro- 
gressively answer  the  first  question,  and  the  light  we  are  getting 
on  the  relations  of  learning  and  reasoning  to  instincts  (which 
will  be  discussed  in  following  chapters)  will  help  to  clear  up 
the  second. 

^  Treatise  of  Human  Nature  (1739),  Bk.  I,  pt.  iii,  sec.  16. 


94  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

The  associationist-utilitarian  psychologists,  it  is  well  known, 
reacted  strongly  away  from  the  instinctive  or  '  intuitive  '  line  of 
explanation  of  mental  phenomena  and  behavior.  Theirs  was  a 
simple  formula  of  knowledge  and  action  determined  by  associa- 
tion of  sensations.  Yet  all  those  writers,  as  has  been  shown  above, 
did  assume  some  instinctive  equipment.  The  occasion  of  their 
reaction  was  plainly  in  the  arbitrary  metaphysical  and  ethical 
principles  which  the  hypothesis  of  intuitive  or  instinctive  knowl- 
edge had  been  used  to  support.  James  Mill's  testy  assertion  that 
the  name  Instinct  is  a  mere  cloak  for  ignorance  was  made  apropos 
the  supposedly  instinctive  belief  in  the  external  world.  The  same 
Mill,  however,  used  the  substance  of  the  instinct  concept  to  ac- 
count for  numerous  original  unlearned  simple  reflexes  of  the  body, 
and  for  the  impulsive  effects,  in  opposite  directions,  of  all  painful 
and  pleasurable  sensations.  Bentham  came  nearer  to  the  modern 
position  when  he  admitted  benevolence,  skill,  ambition  and 
several  others  to  be  '  simple  pleasures,'  for  he  was  then  saying  in 
effect  that  people  are  impelled  to  these  '  pleasures  '  for  no  ulterior 
motive,  but  simply  for  their  own  sweet  sakes.  John  Mill  was  more 
hospitable  to  the  doctrine  of  animal  instincts,  and  he  admitted 
that  the  association  formula  might  have  to  be  revised  in  that 
direction.^ 

Bain  is,  as  usual,  half  way  between  James  Mill  and  William 
James.  He  fully  recognized  the  instincts  and  appetites  as  the 
original  behavior  equipment.  He  described  the  appetites  of 
hunger,  thirst,  sex  and  so  on,  and  he  catalogued  the  instincts  into 
(i)  simple  reflexes,  such  as  breathing,  sucking,  heart  action,  (2) 
the  mechanisms  leading  to  walking,  vocalization  and  general 
bodily  control,  and  (3)  the  arrangements  for  expressing  emotions, 
as  in  laughing,  crying  and  general  random  motions.  The  "de- 
structive and  constructive"  instincts  he  dismissed  as  important 
only  in  the  lower  animals.^  His  work  on  the  emotions  was  very 
important;  ^  many  of  his  classes  are  the  standard  ones  adopted  by 
McDougall.  He  made  original  observations  of  newly-born  lambs 

^  Logic,  Bk.  VI,  ch.  iv,  sec.  4. 

2  A.  Bain,  The  Senses  and  the  Intellect  (1855),  Bk.  I,  chs.  iii,  iv. 

2  The  Emotions  and  the  Will  (1865). 


INSTINCTS,  APTITUDES  AND  APPETITES  95 

to  decide  questions  of  instinct,  and  so  rejected  the  alleged  instinct 
of  imitation,  yet  the  maternal  and  other  social  instincts  never 
made  much  impression  on  him.  He  thought  they  were  chiefly 
derived  from  associations  of  simple  sensuous  pleasures,  and  for 
this  doctrine  McDougall  has  frequent  occasion  to  reproach  him. 

Mechanisms  of  Instinct 

When  we  turn  to  the  more  exact  characterizations  of  instinct 
which  have  resulted  from  modern  researches,  we  find  it  agreed 
that  the  outstanding  features  are  those  that  were  noticed  long 
ago.  It  is  an  '  untaught  ability  '  to  perform  a  peculiar  course  of 
action  in  a  certain  defiLuite  external  situation,  which  action  usually 
promotes  the  survival  of  the  individual  or  his  species;  an  ability 
which  is  somehow  transmitted  by  heredity,  not  acquired  through 
the  subject's  experience,  and  whose  hereditary  nature  is  attested 
by  the  similarity  of  instinctive  actions  in  all  members  of  any 
animal  species;  and  finally,  instinctive  action  is  performed,  on  the 
first  occasion  at  least,  without  foresight  of  the  utility  it  will  have. 
This  similarity  within  a  species  is  not  absolute,  there  are  inborn 
differences  of  capacity  just  as  there  are  differences  in  human  nose- 
lengths;  the  instinct  is  the  general  behavior-character,  as  the  nose 
is  a  general  physical  character.  As  Woodworth  says,  some  cats  are 
naturally  better  mousers  than  others,  but  all  cats  are  more  alike 
in  their  propensity  to  hunt  mice  than  the  similarity  of  their  rear- 
ing would  account  for.  Besides  the  various  food-getting  instincts, 
including  sucking  in  human  infants,  those  of  locomotion,  shelter- 
building,  vocalization,  reproduction  and  care  of  the  young  are 
familiar  examples.  We  shall  defer  the  matter  of  inventory,  how- 
ever, until  we  have  inquired  further  into  the  general  nature  of  an 
instinct. 

The  only  rigid  test  as  to  whether  a  given  action  is  really  instinc- 
tive is  repeated  observations  of  similar  and  relatively  skillful  first 
performances  by  several  members  of  a  species,  imder  conditions 
which  preclude  the  possibility  of  the  animals  having  learned  the 
trick  by  practice  or  imitation.  Such  conditions  exist  when  the 
instinct  functions  directly  after  birth,  or  develops  spontaneously 
when  the  animal  is  reared  in  isolation.   This  test  can  be  realized 


96  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

only  in  a  few  cases,  and  so  there  is  still  room  for  scepticism  as  to 
whether  most  of  the  supposed  instincts  are  really  transmitted 
through  inheritable  characters  in  the  nervous  system,  or  are  car- 
ried simply  by  the  group  '  culture,'  that  is,  by  the  younger  mem- 
bers learning  ways  and  technology  from  the  older  ones. 

It  is  further  pointed  out,  moreover,  that  many  of  the  distinctive 
features  of  so-called  instinctive  behavior  are  due  simply  to 
peculiarities  of  the  animal's  organs,  they  are  the  necessary  results 
of  his  gross  bodily  structures.  It  is  '  instinctive  '  to  us  to  build 
houses  of  a  certain  size,  and  for  birds  to  build  theirs  of  another 
size  and  shape,  largely  because  of  the  ways  our  bodies  differ  in 
size  and  shape  from  theirs.  Our  constructive,  and  possibly  our 
acquisitive,  '  instincts  '  are  clearly  somewhat  dependent  on  the 
structure  of  our  hands, — the  thumb  being  opposed  to  the  fingers 
and  so  capable  of  grasping.  Our  language  '  instincts '  depend 
partly  on  the  structure  of  our  vocal  organs;  and  '  natural  ability  ' 
in  music  and  art  clearly  is  in  part  a  function  of  the  ear  and  eye. 
A  genuine  instinct  is  a  matter  of  inheritable  neural  connections, 
which  determine  a  specific  response;  it  is  not  a  matter  of  other 
inherited  organs. 

A  third  objection  made  to  the  orthodox  theory  of  instincts  is 
that  observations  in  embryology  seem  to  show  that  no  neural 
connections  forming  reflex  circuits  are  predetermined  by  heredity; 
the  fibers  seem  to  grow  out  at  random,  like  the  roots  of  a  plant, 
and  the  responses  of  which  a  new-born  animal  is  capable  are  ap- 
parently '  learned  '  during  its  prenatal  experiences.  On  all  these 
grounds  Professor  Holt,  for  example,  in  his  lectures  disputed  the 
existence  of  instincts  in  the  usual  sense  of  the  term;  and  there 
have  long  been  naturaHsts  like  A.  R.  Wallace  who  believe  that  the 
precocity  in  learning  of  young  animals,  and  the  possibilities  for 
imitation,  will  account  for  all  the  facts  of  behavior  without  the 
assumption  of  instincts.  The  rather  uncritical  exploitation  of 
instinct-doctrines  by  some  of  Darwin's  followers,  like  Romanes, 
is  to  be  charged  in  some  degree  with  the  reaction. 

So  far  as  imitation  or  learning  after  birth  is  concerned,  enough 
trustworthy  evidence,  of  the  rigid  kind  mentioned  above,  has 
been  collected  by  recent  students  of  animal  behavior  so  that  doubt 


INSTINCTS,  APTITUDES  AND  APPETITES  97 

as  to  the  existence  of  any  instincts  at  all  is  absurd.  To  mention 
only  a  few  examples,  the  flight,  pecking  and  sexual  behavior  of 
birds  have  been  proved  instinctive,  solitary  insects  of  many 
species  have  been  found  to  live  the  same  typical  and  intricate 
lives  when  there  is  absolutely  no  possibility  of  imitation,  or  learn- 
ing through  trial  and  error;  and  specific  typical  reactions  to 
hereditary  prey  and  enemies  by  cats,  guinea  hens  and  other 
animals  have  been  abundantly  demonstrated.^  That  a  large 
number  of  other  behavior-series  are  instinctive  is  rendered  prob- 
able by  a  multitude  of  less  critical  observations;  but  the  anecdotes 
of  the  older  naturalists  must  be  accepted  cautiously,  since  the 
writers  often  underrated  the  capacity  of  lower  animals  for  learn- 
ing. 

It  was  formerly  supposed  that  an  instinctive  act  is  performed 
perfectly  on  the  first  occasion,  but  modern  students  all  find  the 
first  performances  crude,  though  serviceable,  and  that  a  gradual 
refinement  comes  from  experience.  Chicks,  for  example,  improve 
the  quality  of  their  pecking  by  practice,  but  their  first  pecks  and 
their  first  steps  are  good  enough  to  keep  them  alive,  and  their 
skill  improves  no  faster  in  the  society  of  their  fellows  than  in 
solitude  from  birth.  On  the  other  hand,  as  is  to  be  expected,  ex- 
periments reveal  many  decisive  social  influences.  Orioles  and 
some  other  birds,  if  reared  in  isolation,  develop  songs  different 
from  those  usual  to  their  species.^ 

^  J.  B.  Watson's  Behavior,  already  cited,  summarizes  in  Ch.  IV  a  number  of  ex- 
perimental studies  of  instinct,  and  gives  references  to  these  valuable  monographs. 
The  Journal  of  Animal  Behavior,  founded  in  191 1,  contains  a  number  of  the  studies: 
see  especially  articles  by  Wallace  Craig,  and  Breed  and  Shepard  on  instincts  of 
chicks  and  doves  in  Vols.  II  and  III;  by  Yerkes  on  rats,  Vol.  Ill;  by  Herrick  on 
nest-building  in  birds.  G.  W.  and  Elizabeth  Peckham's  Wasps,  Social  and  Solitary 
and  Carveth  Read's  "Instinct,  Especially  in  Solitary  Wasps,"  British  Jour,  of  Psy., 
Vol.  IV  (191 1)  are  excellent  studies,  more  scientific,  we  suppose,  than  those  of  Henri 
Fabre.  Jaques  Loeb,  in  Comparative  Physiology  of  the  Brain  and  Comparative 
Psychology  (1900)  gives  corroborative  observations  of  his  own  on  wasps,  and 
numerous  other  personal  studies  of  instincts.  C.  Lloyd  Morgan's  works  Habit  and 
Instinct  (1898?)  and  Instinct  and  Experience  (191 2),  and  Hobhouse's  Mind  in 
Evolution  (ist  edition,  1901),  contain  valuable  and  interesting  evidence  and  theory, 
but  the  technique  does  not  guard  against  misinterpretations  as  does  that  of  the 
students  first-mentioned. 

2  As  to  the  chicks,  see  Breed  and  Shepard,  op.  cit.  Experiments  by  Scott  and 
Conradi  on  songs  of  birds  are  summarized  by  Watson,  op.  cit. 


98  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

The  two  other  objections  to  any  instinct-theory,  mentioned 
above,  take  us  into  the  physiological  realm,  and  it  is  well  for  other 
reasons  that  we  should  try  to  get  our  bearings  there.  It  would  be 
possible,  for  purposes  of  social  science,  to  consider  the  instinctive 
and  other  elements  of  motives,  wholly  in  terms  of  the  gross  be- 
havior such  as  we  have  mentioned,  and  of  the  '  emotional  con- 
sciousness '  presumed  to  accompany  it.  That  has  been  the  usual 
practice,  as  in  McDougall's  work.  We  do  not  propose  to  neglect 
either  of  these  groups  of  data,  but  since  our  chief  problem  is  to 
find  how  '  instinct,'  '  experience,'  '  habit,'  *  pleasure  and  pam  ' 
and  *  the  reason,'  all  interact  and  cooperate  to  shape  our  adult 
motives,  it  is  necessary  to  get  these  elements  onto  a  common 
plane,  or  reduced  to  a  common  denominator.  That  common 
denominator,  according  to  the  present  trend  of  psychology,  is  the 
nervous  system.^ 

The  first  peck  of  the  chick,  or  first  suck  or  sneeze  of  the  infant, 
seems  a  simple  act  by  comparison  with  the  elaborate  ones  of 
which  adults  are  capable,  but  as  Spencer  pointed  out  long  ago, 
all  these  instinctive  acts  imply  a  multitude  of  preformed  reflex 
circuits,  coordinating  the  animal's  movements  with  numerous 
stimuli  of  light,  odor,  touch  and  so  on. 

Spencer  accordingly  defined  instinct  as  '  compound  reflex  ac- 
tion,' ^  carried  out  by  means  of  inherited  neural  mechanisms.  By 
William  James'  time  the  physiological  evidence  made  this  view 
still  more  plausible,  and  so  James  adopted  it  and  stated  it  in  his 
usual  vivid  style.   We  must  not  suppose,  he  says,  that  the  cat,  in 

1  Graham  Wallas  in  The  Great  Society  (1914)  has  recognized  this  necessity  (see 
Ch.  II),  and  his  common  denominator  is  the  "disposition."  He  argues  that,  since 
all  these  elements  are  obviously  founded  on  inherited  bodily  structures,  it  is  fair  to 
consider  them  all  in  some  sort  instinctive.  We  hope  to  push  the  physiological 
analysis  further  than  he  was  then  able,  and  consequently  to  show  more  completely 
the  mechanics  of  their  interaction. 

It  is  not  proposed,  of  course,  that  the  social  scientist  should  always  carry  on  his 
treatment  of  psychological  forces  in  terms  of  reflex  circuits  or  neurons,  any  more 
than  people  should  always  speak  of  eating  in  terms  of  calories.  But  stUl  matters  of 
diet  can  hardly  be  scientifically  discussed  without  some  comprehension  of  the 
calories  and  chemical  elements;  and  so  also,  the  larger  elements  of  behavior  can  be 
more  discriminatingly  handled  with  some  grasp  of  how  they  are  composed  of  re- 
flexes, than  without  it. 

2  Principles  of  Psychology,  Pt.  IV,  ch.  v  (1865), 


INSTINCTS,  APTITUDES  AND  APPETITES  99 

pursuing  the  mouse  or  running  from  the  dog,  has  any  notion  of 
life,  or  death,  or  of  self  and  preservation.  He  is  just  born  with  a 
nervous  system  so  constructed  that  when  the  moving  object  we 
call  a  mouse  appears  in  his  field  of  vision,  he  must  pursue  it,  and 
when  the  object  giving  a  different  pattern  of  stimuli,  which  we 
call  a  dog,  appears,  he  must  run  away  if  there  is  enough  space. 
The  acts  are  as  fatal  as  sneezing,  or  the  knee-jerk,  and  are  corre- 
lated as  exactly  with  their  special  excitants. 

This  view,  he  goes  on,  implies  a  vast  number  of  preformed 
locks,  so  to  speak,  to  which  the  outer  stimuli  are  keys,  but  so  also 
"each  nook  and  cranny  of  creation,  down  to  our  very  skin  and  en- 
trails, has  its  living  inhabitants,  with  organs  suited  to  the  place, 
to  devour  and  digest  the  food  it  harbors  and  to  meet  the  dangers 
it  conceals."  The  instincts  are  simply  one  case  of  the  adaptive- 
ness  of  structure  to  environment  which  is  shown  throughout  the 
animal  creation.  The  older  writings,  with  their  pervading  vague 
wonder  at  the  clairvoyant  and  prophetic  power  of  instinct  and  at 
the  beneficence  of  God  in  providing  it,  says  James,  are  a  waste  of 
words.  "God's  beneficence  endows  them,  first  of  all,  with  a 
nervous  system :  and  turning  our  attention  to  this  makes  instinct 
immediately  appear  neither  more  nor  less  wonderful  than  all  the 
other  facts  of  life."  ^ 

The  above  broad  outlines  of  the  physiology  of  instinct  are  still 
generally  accepted.  It  should  be  remarked  that  the  number  of 
such  organized  reflexes  has  no  relation  to  the  total  number  of 
neurons  in  the  body,  as  one  element  may  be  used  in  several  differ- 
ent response-patterns.  The  central  connections  are  so  arranged, 
however,  that  certain  combinations  of  stimuli  will  give  rise  to  de- 
finite response. 

Discussion  of  the  metaphysical  or  religious  implications  of  in- 
stinct and  reason  is  not  yet  past,  as  is  evidenced  by  the  works  of 
H.  R.  Marshall,^  Hocking  and  others;  but  the  origin  of  the  in- 
stincts we  all  now  refer  to  natural  selection,  in  accordance  with 
the  general  theory  of  biological  evolution.  Viewed  in  this  light, 
the  relatively  great  utility  of  the  instincts  in  preserving  the  lives 

^  Briefer  Course,  pp.  391  S.   Principles  of  Psychology,  Vol.  II,  cb.  xxiv. 
2  Instinct  and  Reason,  New  York,  1898. 


ICX)  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

of  their  possessors  does  not  have  quite  the  fascination  it  had  for 
our  fathers,  because  we  know  that  this  adaptiveness  has  behind  it 
a  red  trail  of  extinguished  Hves,  whose  behavior  variations  proved 
non-adaptive.  Only  those  creatures  whose  variations  were  useful 
became  the  founders  of  species,  and  probably  every  species  has 
always  possessed  some  instincts  which  were  maladaptive. 

Some  sceptics  regarding  instincts,  as  we  have  said,  consider 
inheritance  of  a  peculiar  kind  of  behavior  unplausible.  "How  can 
fear  hatch  out  of  an  egg?"  ^  But  to  most  students  of  the  subject 
there  is  nothing  more  mysterious  about  hereditary  determination 
of  some  central  nerve  connections,  than  about  hereditary  deter- 
mination of  the  joints  of  the  spine  or  hand.  The  exact  mechanisms 
of  both  processes  are  about  equally  obscure,  and  so,  although  the 
neurons  in  their  earlier  stages  appear  to  grow  in  no  more  definite 
directions  than  the  roots  of  a  tree,  we  must  infer  from  the  sim- 
ilarities of  behavior  in  successive  generations,  when  the  factors  of 
imitation  and  determination  by  physical  structure  have  been 
allowed  for,  that  their  course  must  be  predetermined  sufficiently 
to  provide  mechanisms  for  instincts.^ 

The  remaining  objection,  that  instincts  are  learned  through 
prenatal  '  experience  '  —  the  process  at  this  stage  is  really  of  the 
same  fundamental  nature  as  that  of  habit-formation  or  learning 
—  may  be  relevant  for  some  of  the  simpler  reflexes  connected  with 
grasping  by  the  fingers  and  flexing  the  limbs,  but  there  remain  a 
host  of  responses  like  sucking,  swallowing,  crying,  not  to  mention 
the  more  complex  ones,  which  overtax  the  nurture  explanation. 

For  most  sociological  purposes,  to  be  sure  (not  for  biological  or 
physiological),  such  experience  as  a  child  receives  in  the  gestation 
period  is  so  far  beyond  human  control  that  it  may  be  considered  a 

1  E.  g.,  H.  E.  Walter,  Genetics. 

2  Watson,  op.  cit.,  Ch.  V,  discusses  the  problem  of  hereditary  apparatus,  and 
cites  some  experimental  work  on  the  embryos  of  lower  animals  which  tends  to  show 
that  the  neural  connections  constituting  the  reflex  circuits  of  instincts  are  regular 
hereditary  characters.  There  are  some  slight  references  to  the  question  in  the  stand- 
ard works  on  heredity  by  Castle,  Davenport,  and  T.  H.  Morgan,  which  indicate 
that  they  consider  instincts  hereditary  according  to  the  same  principles  as  govern 
the  other  tissues.  Davenport  is  rather  extreme  in  the  large  scope  he  allows  to  heredi- 
tary mental  peculiarities. 


INSTINCTS,  APTITUDES  AND  APPETITES  lOI 

matter  of  heredity.^  The  same  may  be  said  of  those  pseudo- 
instincts  which  are  simply  the  necessary  results  of  a  particular 
gross  bodily  structure.  So  far  as  we  are  usually  concerned,  the 
important  thing  about  an  instinct,  as  about  any  natural  bodily 
character,  is  that  it  will  inevitably  reappear  generation  after 
generation,  regardless  of  acquired  modifications  in  particular 
parents;  and  usually  also,  there  are  some  limits  within  which  it 
can  be  altered  in  one  generation  by  training.  The  difference  be- 
tween what  is  inherited  (including  the  prenatal  experiences) 
and  what  is  acquired,  has  the  same  general  kind  of  importance, 
whether  it  concerns  the  selfishness  of  a  man  or  the  speed  of  a 
race  horse.  The  instinctive  and  other  physiological  endowments 
of  any  species,  including  man,  will,  on  biological  principles,  re- 
main constant  through  many  generations,  although  '  mutations  ' 
do  occur  somehow  which  lead  to  evolution.  The  similar  external 
nurtural  influences,  as  climate,  flora  and  fauna,  and  customs, 
which  may  give  rise,  generation  after  generation,  to  similar  be- 
havior, are,  however,  modifiable  in  a  different  manner,  and  so 
such  pseudo-instincts  should  be  distinguished  as  sharply  as  pos- 
sible from  biological  instincts. 

The  foregoing  discussion  leads  us  to  consider  here  a  peculiar 
kind  of  native  or  inheritable  behavior-equipment,  which  we  may 
call  aptitudes,  or,  with  Woodworth,  '  native  capacities.'  We  refer, 
of  course,  to  any  bent  or  adaptability  for  training,  or  *  interest,'  in 
a  certain  line  of  activity.  Some  dogs  can  more  easily  be  taught  to 
stand  on  their  hind  legs  than  others;  we  speak  of  '  mechanically- 
minded,'  or  '  musically-gifted  '  people.  We  shall  develop  this  mat- 
ter further  in  the  following  chapter,  but  let  us  now  point  out  the 
relation  of  this  concept  to  that  of  instinct.  An  instinct,  according 
to  the  best  scientific  usage  today,  is  a  specific  response,  or  com- 
bination of  reflexes.  An  aptitude,  on  the  other  hand,  is  much 
more  general;  it  merely  refers  to  some  limitation  in  the  range  of 
learning,  some  direction  in  adaptabihty. 

^  In  some  experiments  described  in  "On  egg-structure  and  the  heredity  of  in- 
stincts," Monist,  Vol.  VIII  (1897),  Loeb  showed  that  some  instincts  of  protozoans 
are  much  distorted  if  the  eggs  are  not  left  to  develop  in  their  native  sea  water,  as  the 
physico-chemical  peculiarities  of  the  latter  help  to  determine  the  structure  of  the 
mature  organism. 


I02  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

Physiologically  it  may  be  conceived  in  two  ways,  which  are 
probably  supplementary.  The  person  gifted  in  any  given  line 
probably  has  effector-organs  —  ear,  eye,  throat,  hands,  etc.  — 
specially  well  suited  for  this  particular  behavior,  as  a  race  horse 
must  have  strength  and  wind.  But  aptitude  seems  also  to  imply 
especially  favorable  neural  dispositions  which  make  learning  easy 
and  attractive  in  a  particular  field.  There  may  even  be  a  true 
instinctive  nucleus,  i.  e.,  an  innate  system  of  reflexes,  which  are 
*  incomplete  '  from  the  point  of  view  of  a  first  practical  per- 
formance, but  which  are  easily  completed  by  habits.  It  must  be 
remembered  that  all  instincts  are  soon  supplemented  and  overlaid 
by  habit-mechanisms  (that  is,  other  reflexes  become  connected 
with  them) ;  and  it  seems  that  the  instincts  do  predetermine  the 
range  of  learning  in  certain  directions,  for  example,  as  to  eating, 
mating,  etc.,  even  though  there  are  many  options  left  to  individual 
experience. 

Evolutionary  Scale  of  Innate  Responses 

It  is  also  useful  in  the  study  of  motives  to  have  a  view  of 
the  ascending  scale  of  innate  responses;  to  look  at  the  matter 
genetically. 

The  simplest  organisms,  plant  and  animal,  have  these  hered- 
itary forms  of  response  to  various  features  of  the  environment 
which  enable  them  to  get  food  and  other  necessities.^  In  animals, 
locomotion  toward  food  and  away  from  harm  are  among  the 
most  important  reactions.  In  the  lowest  creatures,  many  of  them 
being  single-celled,  these  stereotyped  responses  are  called  tro- 
pisms,  from  the  Greek  word  meaning  to  turn.  Tropisms  are 
classified  according  to  the  stimulus  which  excites  them  to  action, 
—  light  (helio-  or  phototropism),  heat,  gravity,  chemical  action, 
touch  and  others.  They  are  identical  in  principle  with  the  reflex 
circuit,  except  that  there  are  no  separate  nerve-cells  involved, 
but  only  partially  specialized  tracts  within  the  organism's  one 
cell.2 

1  Charles  Darwin  did  some  pioneer  work  on  the  apparatus  for  guiding  roots  and 
stems,  which  is  given  in  his  book  The  Power  of  Movement  in  Plants. 

^  It  seems  to  us  confusing  to  apply  the  term  tropism  to  responses  of  the  higher 
animals,  as  reflex  and  instinct  will  answer  the  purpose  there.  Loeb,  however,  uses  it 


INSTINCTS,  APTITUDES  AND  APPETITES  103 

Now  the  lowest  organisms  known  have  tropisms  adjusted  to 
more  than  one  stimulus,  so  that  the  behavior  of  any  living  crea- 
ture is  determined  by  several '  motives,'  acting  now  in  one  direc- 
tion, now  in  another,  and  frequently  simultaneously  to  produce  a 
resultant  course.  Ordinarily  it  moves  directly  toward  the  source 
of  one  of  the  above-mentioned  stimuli,  if  the  stimulation  is  not 
too  strong,  by  means  of  the  simultaneous  operation  of  two  loco- 
motor circuits,  —  one  for  each  side.  So  long  as  only  one  of  the 
sense-organs  is  stimulated,  say  by  light,  only  the  locomotor  organ 
on  the  opposite  side  will  move,  and  the  body  is  slewed  around  to 
*  face  '  the  light  Then  presently  both  sense-organs  are  simultane- 
ously stimulated,  both  locomotor  organs  respond,  and  the  or- 
ganism moves  in  a  straight  line  toward  the  source  of  light.  This 
bilateral  symmetry,  characteristic  of  the  lowest  orders  of  response 
apparatus,  and  directing  the  response  toward  an  object,  has  left  its 
impress  on  almost  the  whole  animal  kingdom.  Nearly  all  animals 
have  double  sets  of  effectors,  on  right  and  left  sides.  But  the 
creature  has  also  other  tropisms,  say  one  which  makes  it  avoid  too 
strong  a  light  or  a  few  of  its  other  dangers  and  obstructions,  and 
.  another  for  enveloping  the  food  when  it  is  reached,  etc.  The  re- 
actions of  the  protozoa  are  so  limited  in  number  that  an  investiga- 
tor who  studies  the  behavior  of  one  species  can  fmally  predict 
fairly  well  what  its  response  will  be  to  a  certain  set  of  stimuli.  He 
cannot  tell  perfectly,  however,  for  the  response  in  all  animals 
varies  from  time  to  time  according  to  inner  physiological  condi- 
tions which  cannot  be  directly  observed. 

As  we  go  *  up  '  the  evolutionary  scale,  we  find  a  larger  and 
larger  equipment  of  reactions  to  more  and  more  features  of  the 
environment,  made  possible  by  the  acquisition  of  a  bundle  of 
specialized  nerve-fibers  which  have  numerous  interconnections. 

in  the  more  general  sense.  Some  standard  works  on  the  evolutionary  series  of 
tropisms  and  instincts  are  H.  S.  Jennings,  Behavior  of  the  Lower  Organisms  (1906); 
J.  Loeb,  Comparative  Physiology  of  the  Brain  and  Comparative  Psychology  (1900), 
—  this  is  partly  superseded  by  his  later  works,  The  Organism  as  a  Whole  (191 6)  and 
Forced  Movements,  Tropisms  and  Animal  Conduct  (1918);  S.  J.  Holmes,  Evolution 
of  Animal  Intelligence  (1911),  Studies  in  Animal  Behavior  (1916).  The  excellent 
philosophical  work  of  L.  T.  Hobhouse,  Mind  in  Evolution  (1901,  1915)  is  well 
known.  A  useful  summary  is  in  M.  Parmelee,  The  Science  of  Human  Behavior 
(1913)- 


I04  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

With  the  development  of  a  nervous  system,  that  is  to  say,  the 
simple  reflexes  can  be  combined  and  recombined  into  units  of 
higher  and  higher  orders.  The  nervous  system  has  an  integrative 
function,  it  enables  a  limited  number  of  elementary  reactions  to  be 
used  for  a  larger  number  of  purposes,  just  as  the  grasping  of  our 
hand  —  simple  in  itself  —  enters  into  so  many  different  kinds  of 
acts.  The  combinations  of  reflexes  which  are  inheritable  are  the 
instincts.  Those  which  are  acquired  from  individual  experience 
are  habits;  the  acquisition  of  habits,  as  we  shall  see  in  the  next 
chapter,  is  learning. 

We  may  notice  here,  though  we  shall  return  to  it,  the  point  so 
admirably  developed  by  Professor  Holt,  namely,  the  recession  of 
the  immediate  stimulus  as  the  key  to  the  organism's  behavior.^ 
If  the  animal  has  only  two  locomotive  circuits,  set  to  be  activated 
by  light,  his  behavior  is  wholly  a  function  of  the  source  of  light. 
What  he  is  doing  is  moving  toward  the  light.  But  if  he  has  an- 
other tropism  which  makes  him  avoid  heat,  then  when  he  ap- 
proaches the  source  of  light  his  behavior  will  be  a  function  neither 
of  the  position  of  that  source,  nor  of  its  heat,  taken  singly,  but  of 
the  total  situation.  The  key  to  his  behavior  is  in  the  unreal  or 
ideal  object  upon  which  his  separate  responses  converge,  —  the 
point  in  his  path  toward  the  light  where  his  heat-avoiding  reaction 
will  become  stimulated.  And  that  is  the  case  in  all  complex  con- 
duct. It  is,  presumably,  ultimately  reducible  to  reflexes;  but 
their  involved  interplay  disguises  them  to  common-sense  observa- 
tion, and  the  one  object  of  which  the  behavior  as  a  whole  is  a 
function  becomes  an  ideal  and  perhaps  non-existent  focal  point, 
—  for  instance,  the  gold  which  it  is  hoped  may  be  in  the  unworked 
mine,  or  the  love  of  God  which  one  hopes  to  merit. 

Mechanisms  of  Appetites  —  *  Persistence  ' 

If  we  examine  the  phenomena  of  instinct  at  further  length,  we 
shall  find  certain  complications  which  seem  to  upset  the  above 
simple  theory.  We  find,  for  instance,  that  some  instincts  become 
operative  only  some  months  or  years  after  the  animal's  birth, 
while  others  regularly  disappear  after  a  period  of  activity;  and 
^  The  Freudian  Wish,  especially  Ch.  II. 


INSTINCTS,  APTITUDES  AND  APPETITES  105 

further  that  all  instincts  are  somewhat  variable  in  action.  A 
given  stimulus  does  not  always  produce  identical  responses  in  the 
same  animal.  Sometimes  a  dog,  for  reasons  of  his  own,  will  refuse 
to  stir  after  a  rabbit  or  a  fleeing  cat.  But  the  worst  obstacle  of  all 
to  the  reflex-theory  is  the  indefinite  but  persistent  striving  which 
instincts  so  frequently  manifest,  the  refusal  of  the  animal  to  quit 
until  a  number  of  expedients  have  been  tried  or  the  '  natural '  end 
achieved.  A  dog  hunting  a  lost  trail,  a  mouse  escaping  from  a  cat, 
a  cat  trying  to  open  a  puzzle-box  to  secure  food,  all  exemplify 
this  resourcefulness  which,  according  to  some  psychologists,  char- 
acterizes all  instincts.  McDougall,  for  example,  refuses  to  be 
content  with  the  merely  mechanical  reflex  formula,  for,  he  says, 

All  instinctive  behavior  exhibits  that  unique  mark  of  mental  process,  a 
persistent  striving  towards  the  natural  end  of  the  process.  That  is  to  say,  the 
process,  unlike  any  merely  mechanical  process,  is  not  to  be  arrested  by  any 
sufl&cient  mechanical  obstacle,  but  is  rather  intensified  by  any  such  obstacle 
and  only  comes  to  an  end  either  when  its  appropriate  goal  is  achieved,  or 
when  some  stronger  incompatible  tendency  is  excited,  or  when  the  creature  is 
exhausted  by  its  persistent  efforts.^ 

Yet  if  we  can  get  a  more  definite  idea  of  how  the  simple,  fatal 
reactions  or  chains  of  reflexes  become  integrated  so  as  to  provide 
for  flexibility  and  adaptability  of  behavior,  we  shall  have  a  more 
comprehensive  and  more  practically  useful  understanding  of  in- 
stinct than  if  we  content  ourselves  with  invoking  a  magic  '  cona- 
tive  striving,'  which  is  supposed  to  be  essential  to  any  simple 
instinct,  and  by  pointing  to  our  own  consciousness  in  apparently 
similar  situations.  These  generalities  attribute  a  pseudo-sim- 
plicity to  the  instincts,  and  they  oversimplify  the  larger  human 
endeavors  still  more. 

The  complications  mentioned  are  less  formidable  to  our  theory 
when  we  consider  (besides  the  variability  in  behavior  which  is  to 
be  expected  when  opposing  instincts  are  excited  by  their  appro- 
priate stimuli  nearly  at  the  same  time)  the  variations  in  stores  of 
energy  in  the  cell-tracts  at  different  times,  as  well  as  other  dif- 
ferences in  the  inner  physiological  state.  The  hungry  dog's  total 
stimulation  in  the  presence  of  a  rabbit  is  very  different  from  that 

1  Social  Psychology  (1909),  p.  27,  Ch.  I. 


Io6  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

of  a  replete  dog,  and  so  on.  There  is  no  question  that  various 
substances  and  secretions  within  the  body  are  continually  stimu- 
lating inner  sensory  nerves,  thereby  contributing  to  the  or- 
ganism's total  behavior.  Breathing,  for  instance,  varies  with  the 
composition  of  the  blood  as  regards  oxygen  and  carbon;  and 
clearly  the  sexual  secretions  have  a  decided  influence  on  the  gen- 
eral activity,  so  that  an  identical  external  stimulus  will  at  one 
time  be  effective  and  at  another,  not.  Hunger  and  thirst  are 
inner  conditions  which  involve  chemical  and  mechanical  stimuli, 
and  it  is  probable  that  excess  or  deficiency  of  muscular  cell  nour- 
ishment gives  chemical  stimuli  toward  bodily  activity  (exercise) 
or  toward  repose. 

The  changes  in  nervous  structure  which  underlie  the  growth 
and  subsidence  of  instincts  are  evidently  to  be  accounted  for 
along  the  same  lines  as  similar  phenomena  in  the  grosser  bodily 
structures,  such  as  the  beard  and  two  sets  of  teeth,  and  it  is  be- 
lieved by  physiologists  that  chemical  secretions  poured  by  certain 
glands  into  the  blood  have  a  large  share  in  these  regulations  of 
bodily  growth.^ 

On  the  other  hand,  the  '  physiological  state  '  which  contributes 
to  behavior  may  not  be  a  matter  of  inner  stimuli;  it  may  be  noth- 
ing more  than  temporary  insolvency  of  certain  neurons  or  muscles, 
so  that  a  reaction  for  which  the  connections  had  been  best  estab- 
lished is  temporarily  '  out  of  order.' 

This  line  of  explanation  of  the  appetites  of  hunger,  thirst,  oxy- 
gen, sex,  exercise  and  repose,  and  the  fact  of  differing  states  of 
efficiency  among  various  reactions  at  one  time,  supplement  the 
compound  reflex  theory  of  instinct  so  that  the  whole  becomes 
reasonably  adequate  for  the  facts.^  An  appetite,  as  of  hunger, 
arises  and  persists  through  the  continued  inner  stimulations; 
there  are  also  instinctive  responses  connected  with  these  prompt- 
ings and  with  stimuli  from  the  outer  situation  which  lead  to 
peculiar  ways  of  satisfying  the  appetite,  i.  e.,  the  food-getting, 

1  Loeb,  op.  ciL;  Herrick,  op.  ciL,  pp.  iii,  249. 

2  The  above  account  of  the  appetites  was  derived  chiefly  from  lectures  by  Pro- 
fessor E.  B.  Holt.  Watson's  discussion  of  the  organic  sense  (Psychol,  pp.  64-66,  is 
to  the  same  effect.  Cf.  Woodworth,  op.  cit.,  Ch.  V,  and  Herrick,  Introduction  to 
Neurology  (191S),  Ch.  XVII. 


INSTINCTS,  APTITUDES  AND  APPETITES  107 

sexual  instincts,  and  so  on.  The  periodicity  of  these  appetites  is 
explained  by  the  functional  round  of  nutrition  and  expenditure  of 
energy  by  the  body,  and  is  connected  also  with  the  natural  cycles 
of  day  and  night,  summer  and  winter.  The  continued  *  striving  ' 
of  an  instinctive  process  is  then  to  be  attributed  to  the  contin- 
uance of  stimulations,  which  keep  inciting  the  creature  to  activity 
until  the  stimulus  is  removed,  —  by  ingestion  of  food  or  other- 
wise. The  stimulations  of  fear  naturally  continue  so  long  as  there 
are  any  indications  of  the  feared  object,  and  the  pangs  of  hunger 
persist  until  the  stomach  is  filled.  The  response  first  tried  is  the 
ordinary  instinctive  one,  that  is,  the  one  for  which  the  hereditary 
neural  coimections  are  most  favorable.  But  when  this  response 
fails  to  stop  the  current  of  stimuli,  the  depletion  of  energy  through 
this  particular  chain  of  reflexes  will  cause  the  incoming  neural 
currents  (which  may  now  be  through  different  sense-organs, 
from  other  aspects  of  the  external  situation)  to  be  diverted  to 
other  instinctive  or  habitual  responses,  or  they  may  break 
through  wholly  new  connections  and  thus  cause  a  *  random  ' 
movement.  Thus  we  can  account  for  the  variability  of  instinctive 
action  wholly  on  mechanistic  principles,  and  at  the  same  time,  as 
will  appear  in  the  next  chapter,  have  made  a  long  start  on  the 
explanation  of  learning  and  intelligent  action.^ 

The  moral  for  social  scientists  of  all  this  physiologizing,  is  that 
the  instincts  are  not,  as  McDougall  and  many  others  would  lead 
us  to  believe,  all  homogeneous  lumps,  differing  from  each  other 
only  in  their  emotions  and  gross  bodily  expressions,  but  are 
varying  blends  of  numerous  mechanisms.  The  '  striving  '  of  each 
one,  therefore,  is  due  to  a  mechanism  in  some  degree  peculiar  to 
itself,  and  only  by  knowing  something  of  this  individual  mechan- 
ism can  we  consider  intelligently  such  problems  as  the  '  balking  ' 
of  the  '  instinct  of  workmanship,'  the  '  repression  '  of  the  '  sexual 
instinct,'  or  the  possible  '  sublimation  '  of  the  '  instinct  of  pugnac- 
ity.' Physiological  analysis,  we  beheve,  is  the  only  way  to  squeeze 
the  magic  out  of  the  concept  of  instinct. 

1  See  Woodworth,  op.  cit.,  Ch.  V,  especially  sections  on  "multiple  possibilities  of 
reaction,"  and  "advantage  possessed  by  one  alternative  reaction  over  the  others." 
His  account  is  similar  to  ours  but  is  vague  in  many  places  because  he  uses  so  much 
introspective  data.  He  assumes,  for  instance,  that  when  a  reaction  results  in  "  pain," 
there  is  no  need  of  accounting  further  for  the  shift  to  another  response. 


Io8  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

Let  us  keep  in  mind,  then,  these  important  classes  of  behavior- 
mechanisms,  all  of  which  are  relatively  stable  through  generations 
of  any  race,  and  all  of  which  have  been  confused  with  '  instinct ' 
in  the  social  sciences.  An  instinct  is  a  specific  response  provided 
by  a  complete,  hereditary  system  of  reflexes,  which  core,  soon 
after  birth,  begins  to  acquire  supplementary  reflexes  based  on  the 
individual  environment.  In  addition  to  such  hereditary  neural 
connections,  much  similarity  and  also  much  variabiUty  of  be- 
havior is  provided  by  other  hereditary  bodily  characters,  such  as  the 
thumb,  or  the  glands,  etc.,  which  furnish  the  stimulations  of  ap- 
petite. Then  there  is  the  general  aptitude,  which  apparently  is 
given  direction  by  both  instinctive  and  other  organic  bases,  but 
which  as  a  whole  always  includes  some  learned,  or  acquired,  and 
therefore  variable,  reflexes.  All  the  foregoing  are  predominantly 
hereditary  characters,  and  all  are  to  be  sharply  distinguished  from 
that  stable  mode  of  behavior  which  is  the  result  of  uniform  exter- 
nal conditions  in  which  learning  takes  place,  such  as  landscape, 
companions,  social  customs  and  culture.  These  conditions  are 
usually  more  amenable  to  deliberate  social  control  than  are  the 
hereditary  characters.  Generalizations  may  be  made  about  each 
of  these  stable  modes,  and  useful  ones,  but  we  must  beware  of 
predicating  of  all  what  is  true  of  only  some. 


CHAPTER  IX 

THE  HUMAN  INSTINCTS  AND  APTITUDES 

Inventory  of  Human  Instincts 

We  may  now  proceed  with  the  topic  which  would  have  seemed  to 
be  the  only  one  connected  with  instincts  that  could  be  important 
to  us,  —  namely,  the  inventory  of  human  instincts.  McDougall's 
list  (1908)  must  be  noticed,  as  it  has  been  the  most  influential  of 
recent  years.  It  is  based  considerably  on  the  older  lists  of  Preyer, 
Schneider,  James,  Sutherland,  Baldwin  and  others.  McDougall 
beHeves  there  are  seven  human  instincts  of  fimdamental  impor- 
tance in  social  life,  and  that  the  activity  of  each  is  attended  by  a 
peculiar  primary  emotion,  as  follows : 

Instinct  corresponding  emotion 

Flight  Fear 

Repulsion  Disgust 

Ctiriosity  Wonder 

Pugnacity  Anger 

Self-abasement  (subjection)  Subjection,  negative  self-feeling 

Self-assertion  (display)  Elation,  positive  self-feeling 

Parental  Tender  emotion 

Other  true  instincts,  according  to  him,  which  are  less  important 
for  society,  are  sex  or  reproduction,  gregariousness,  acquisition  or 
ownership,  constructiveness  or  contrivance,  hunger,  and  "  a 
number  of  minor  instincts,  such  as  those  that  prompt  to  crawling 
and  walking."  ^  The  tendency  to  habit-formation  and  a  con- 
sequent preference  of  the  f amiHar  to  the  unf amiHar  thing,  and  the 
prolonging  effect  of  pleasure  on  action  and  the  inhibiting  effect  of 
pain,  are  also  considered  primary  and  ultimate  psychological 
facts,  and  therefore  somewhat  of  the  nature  of  instincts. 

He  holds  that  pleasure-pain  theories  of  action  are  shallow  and 
libelous  to  human  nature;  that  the  instincts  are  the  prime  movers 
in  all  action,  frequently  over-riding  pleasure  and  pain.    But 

»  Op.  ciL,  Ch.  III. 


I  lO  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

pleasure  and  pain,  it  is  hinted,  are  of  great  efl&cacy  in  learning,  in 
grafting  habits  onto  the  instincts  so  that  the  latter  may  function 
efficiently  in  the  subject's  peculiar  environment.^ 

This  list  has  much  in  common  with  that  which  we  shall  pres- 
ently sponsor,  but  McDougall's  concept  of  an  instinct  —  say 
that  of  *  flight '  —  as  a  lump,  exercising  quasi-intelhgence  in  deal- 
ing with  the  situation  before  it,  is  considered  a  misleading  over- 
simplification, as  we  have  shown.  We  therefore  follow  the  practice 
of  Thorndike,  Woodworth  and  Watson  in  speaking  rather  of 
groups  of  human  instincts.  The  specific  responses  to  definite 
stimuli  (internal  or  external),  are  necessarily  very  numerous,  for 
learned  responses  are  supposed  to  be  only  new  combinations 
of  preexisting  reflex  elements;  consequently  for  convenience  of 
treatment  it  is  necessary  to  group  the  instincts,  so  far  as  they  can 
be  recognized,  into  classes  having  similar  stunuH,  or  having  re- 
sponses giving  the  same  general  effect. 

Present-day  experimental  psychologists  are  loath  to  generalize 
about  such  a  gross  entity  as  '  the  instinct '  of  *  curiosity,'  etc., 
until  they  learn  more  exactly  what  are  the  stimuli  and  responses 
which  are  to  be  headed  instinctive  curiosity.  They  speak,  there- 
fore, of  the  groups  of  responses  which  may  be  called  instinctive 
curiosity,  or  which  result  in  food-getting,  defense,  and  so  on.^ 
Then  the  inclusion  of  any  given  activity  in  the  major  groups  de- 

1  Op.  cit.,  Ch.  I,  p.  43;  Ch.  II;  Ch.  VII. 

2  "Those  who,  like  McDougall,  attempt  to  trace  all  motive  force  to  the  instincts, 
would  regard  such  acts  as  driven  by  the  native  impulses  of  curiosity  and  manipula- 
tion; but  in  so  doing  they  miss  the  point.  There  is  not  an  undifferentiated  reservoir 
of  motive  force,  to  be  called  curiosity,  that  can  be  led  off  into  one  or  another  act  of 
perception;  but  curiosity  is  simply  a  collective  name  for  an  indefinite  number  of  im- 
pulses, each  of  which  is  dependent  on  the  existence  of  some  degree  of  ability  to  per- 
ceive and  understand  a  certain  object.  The  child  shows  curiosity  first  with  regard 
to  bright  lights  and  sharp  contrasts,  which  are  the  natural  stimuli  for  his  eye  move- 
ments; later,  after  he  has  learned  to  some  extent  to  know  persons  and  things,  his 
curiosity  is  directed  towards  them;  and  when  he  has  begun  to  perceive  the  relations 
of  things,  he  shows  curiosity  regarding  these  relations."  —  Woodworth,  op.  cit., 
p.  103. 

The  same  objection  apphes  in  greater  degree  to  most  members  of  the  Freudian 
school,  as  their  instincts  are  "undifferentiated  reservoirs  of  motive  force"  par  ex- 
cellence. 

The  criticism,  it  is  true,  is  from  the  point  of  view  that  the  physico-chemical 
series  in  the  body  is  not  interrupted  by  '  the  mind,'  and  that  physiological  explana- 


THE  HUMAN  INSTINCTS  AND  APTITUDES  III 

pends  on  the  accuracy  of  observations  which  have  been  made  in 
respect  to  it,  rather  than  on  the  general  question  whether  there  is 
an  instinct  of  such  and  such. 

The  criteria  by  which  true  instincts  are  to  be  recognized  have 
been  indicated.  Proved  first  performances  by  numerous  members 
of  a  species  (at  birth  or  with  the  possibility  of  learning  otherwise 
precluded),  of  a  similar  response  to  similar  situations,  the  re- 
sponse being  skillful  and  adaptive  enough  on  the  first  occasion  so 
that  it  cannot  be  considered  a  random  effort,  —  these  specifica- 
tions are  necessary  to  the  most  satisfactory  test.  The  first  per- 
formance may  be  possible  only  some  months  or  years  after  birth, 
because  instincts  mature  in  that  manner,  as  do  teeth,  hair,  etc. 

By  tests  of  this  nature  students  of  animal  behavior  have  given 
us  our  most  reliable  knowledge  of  what  animal  instincts  actually 
do  exist,  but  of  course  they  can  be  only  crudely  applied  to  human 
beings.  Watson  has  recently  directed  experiments  with  a  number 
of  infants  in  a  maternity  ward,  which  give  pretty  satisfactory 
evidence  of  the  instincts  then  mature,^  but  which  (naturally) 
shed  no  light  on  instincts  which  may  mature  at  later  periods. 
Continued  observations  of  a  few  growing  children  have  been 
recorded  and  are  used  by  Thorndike  in  The  Original  Nature  of 
Man  (1913).  Such  evidence  is  likely,  however,  to  be  vitiated  by 
prepossession  in  the  observer;  which  leads  to  his  overlooking  im- 
portant possibilities  of  learning. 

We  must  have  some  recourse,  then,  to  uncertain  and  inconclu- 
sive criteria.   Woodworth,  a  critic  of  the  first  order,  says: 

Where  the  members  of  a  species  or  other  natural  group  are  either  more 
alike  or  more  different  in  any  respect  than  can  be  accounted  for  by  their  in- 
dividual experience,  we  have  reason  to  believe  that  the  likeness  or  difference 
in  their  traits  is  due  to  the  native  factor.^ 

tions  are  the  most  fundamental.  It  is  open  to  anyone  to  take  the  view  of  inter- 
actionism,  in  which  case  he  may  as  well  give  his  psychic  powers  plenty  to  do  and  so 
lighten  his  labors  in  physiology. 

*  Resumed  in  his  Psychology  from  the  Standpoint  of  a  Behaviorist  (1919).  Two 
of  the  studies  are  reported  by  Watson  and  Morgan,  "Emotional  Reactions  and 
Psychological  Experimentation,"  Am.  Jour.  Psy.,  28:  163-174  (1917);  and  M.  B. 
Blanton,  "The  Behavior  of  the  Human  Infant  during  the  First  Thirty  Days  of 
Life,"  Psy.  Rev.,  24:  456-483  (1917). 

2  Op.  ciL,  p.  45. 


112  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

The  crucial  thing  is  to  judge  whether  experience  can  account  for 
such  similarity  or  difference.  If  we  find  a  way  of  acting,  say  as  to 
providing  habitations,  common  to  all  known  races  of  men,  we  are 
still  not  justified  in  calling  it  instinctive  imless  we  can  rule  out 
(i)  Similar  environmental  and  structural  influences,  and  (2)  Pos- 
sibility of  intercourse  between  societies,  and  thus  the  influence  of 
imitation,  or  culture. 

Similarly,  McDougall's  tests,  the  existence  of  analogous  tend- 
encies in  other  higher  animals,  and  exaggerated  or  abnormal 
instances  among  men,^  must  be  used,  but  with  great  caution. 
William  James  assumed  that  man  has  inherited  most  of  the  pre- 
human instincts,  but  Watson  properly  replies  that  animals  which 
have  the  most  complete  instinctive  equipment,  for  example,  the 
insects,  have  the  least  capacity  for  learning;  and  those  with 
largest  learning  capacity  seem  to  have  fewest  instincts.  Instinct 
and  learning  power,  he  says,  are  present  in  any  animal  in  inverse 
ratio. ^  The  instincts  of  lower  animals,  many  of  which  are  abim- 
dantly  attested,^  may  suggest  hypothetical  human  instincts,  but 
more  evidence  must  be  looked  for. 

Beginning  with  instincts  proper  (specific  responses),  the  best 
authenticated  major  groups  in  men,  arranged  roughly  in  simple- 
to-complex  order,  are  as  follows  (the  list  is  almost  the  same  as 
Woodworth's,  Ch.  Ill) : 

1.  Inner  reflexes 

2.  Muscular  coordinations  or  bodily  control 

3.  Locomotion 

4.  Vocalization  —  language 

5.  Food-getting 

6.  Defense  —  fear 

7.  Oflfence  —  pugnacity  or  rage 

8.  Exploration  with  eyes  and  manipulation  —  '  curiosity,'  '  contriv- 
ance,' '  novelty' 

9.  Sexual 

10.  Parental 

11.  Gregarious 

12.  Responses  to  social  approval  and  disapproval 

13.  Other  emotional  reactions 

14.  Other  positive  and  negative  responses 

1  Op.  cit.,  p.  49  (Ch.  II).  *  Psychology,  p.  254. 

'  An  extended  list,  critically  assembled,  is  in  Watson's  Behavior  (1914),  Ch.  IV. 


THE  HUMAN  INSTINCTS  AND  APTITUDES  II3 

The  distinctions  are  rather  arbitrary  and  illogical;  several 
groups  might  be  condensed,  as  defense  and  offence,  gregarious- 
ness  and  responses  to  social  approval  and  disapproval.  Some, 
moreover,  as  the  parental,  gregarious  and  social,  are  still  doubt- 
ful, and  much  further  evidence  is  required  before  we  can  un- 
hesitatingly assert  that  there  are  such  instincts.  Finally,  some 
classes  are  involved  in  others;  "emotional  reactions"  are  partly 
included  in  inner  reflexes,  ''muscular  coordinations"  are  used  in 
all  the  subsequent  groups;  ^  and  nearly  all  responses  might  be 
classed  as  positive  or  negative.  But  on  the  whole,  such  a  list 
appears  to  be  the  most  convenient. 

To  explain  and  defend  it  in  greater  detail: 

The  inner  reflexes  are  those  of  the  heart,  lungs,  stomach,  other 
parts  of  the  circulatory  and  alimentary  systems,  glandular  reac- 
tions, and  doubtless  still  others, — unquestionably  a  very  great 
number  in  all.  The  appetites  of  oxygen,  exercise  and  repose  are 
provided  for  by  some  of  these  innate  mechanisms.  Appetite,  as 
we  use  the  term,  refers  to  a  reaction  involving  inner  stimuli  which 
recur  regularly  because  of  physiological  cycles.  These  stimuli  set 
the  corresponding  instincts  in  motion. 

By  muscular  coordinations  or  bodily  control  is  meant  those 
mechanisms  providing  for  flexing  and  extending  the  limbs,  lips, 
tongue,  moving  the  head,  moving  and  focusing  the  eyes,  the 
grasping  reflex  of  the  hands,  upon  which  much  experimental  work 
has  been  done,  the  patellar  reflex,  the  Babinski  reflex,  and  so  on. 
All  authorities  are  agreed  that  these  reactions  are  due  to  innate 
neural  adjustments,  though  objection  might  fairly  be  made  to 
classing  them  with  the  instincts,  —  instincts  being  considered 
complex  combinations  of  reflexes.  We  list  them  so  that  they  will 
not  be  lost  sight  of,  and  also  because  many  if  not  all  of  them  are 
complexes  of  simple  reflexes.   As  has  been  mentioned,  the  simple 

^  On  this  foundation  Hocking  (Human  Nature  and  Its  Remaking)  erects  a  con- 
siderable metaphysical  superstructure,  —  a  hierarchy  of  human  instincts,  cul- 
minating in  "the  will  to  power."  The  situation  is  paralleled,  however,  by  many 
mechanical  contrivances  which  use  the  same  minor  apparatuses  in  different  opera- 
tions, like  an  adding  machine.  Its  explanation  does  not  necessarily  require  a 
ghostly  guiding  hand. 


114  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

reflex  is  supposed  to  be  an  abstraction,  not  existing  in  isolation 
from  larger  responses.^ 

Instinctive  locomotion  apparatus  is  complex  and  weU-developed 
in  the  lower  animals,  and  by  analogy  James  and  his  followers 
have  believed  that  the  human  infant  crawls,  walks,  climbs,  more 
by  instinct  than  by  learning.  It  is  doubtful.  Probably  we  have 
here  an  aptitude  for  acquiring  locomotion  habits.  Watson  records 
experiments  with  several  infants  to  determine  if  crawling  is 
instinctive,  and  says  the  results  are  inconclusive  (Psychology, 
p.  248). 

Vocalization  instincts  are  unmistakable ;  and  these  illustrate  the 
successive  appearance  or  '  ripening '  of  the  native  responses. 
After  several  months  in  which  crying  is  the  only  vocal  response, 
the  infant  begins  to  coo;  presently  it  is  saying  "  Ah-goo,"  or  "  Ah- 
boo";  "Mam-mam,"  ''Ba-ba,"  *' Da-da."  These  are  the  be- 
ginnings toward  the  vastly  complex  language  habits  which  are  a 
distinguishing  mark  of  the  human  species. 

The  food-getting  responses  include  moving  the  head  to  catch  the 
nipple,  sucking,  swallowing,  chewing,  spitting  out  bitter  sub- 
stances, crying  when  stimulated  by  the  appetites  of  hunger  and 
thirst.  Movements  of  the  arms  and  hands  to  put  things  into  the 
mouth  should  doubtless  be  included;  and  possibly  there  is  a  slight 
instinctive  bent  at  later  ages  toward  hunting  wild  game,  or  to- 
ward other  fairly  definite  food-seeking  behavior.^ 

The  defense  responses  are  various.  Coughing,  sneezing,  blink- 
ing, crying,  resistance  to  falling,  are  of  this  type,  as  well  as  jerking 
away  from  painful  stimuli  such  as  pinches,  pricks,  or  burns.  The 
native  fear-reactions,  recently  studied  discriminatingly  by  Wat- 
son and  Morgan,  may  be  put  into  this  class  broadly  speaking. 
The  stimuli  to  original  fear,  as  distinguished  from  pain-reactions, 
appear  to  be  only  loud  noises  or  the  subject's  falling  for  lack  of 

'  Woodworth  {op.  cit.,  p.  47)  adds  that  native  equipment  includes  the  use  of  the 
sense-organs,  in  seeing,  seeing  red,  etc.  This  category  appears  to  us  redundant, 
since  every  sensation  is  presumably  correlated  with  some  reflex.  (See  above,  Ch. 
VII.) 

2  See  Watson,  Psychology,  pp.  238  ff.,  for  recent  experimental  work,  including 
that  of  Mrs.  Blanton,  which  is  also  described  in  Psy.  Rev.,  24:  456-483.  Watson 
doubts  the  hunting  instinct  (p.  254),  which  James  and  Thorndike  had  endorsed 
(Thorndike,  op.  cit.,  pp.  50-56). 


THE  HUMAN  INSTINCTS  AND  APTITUDES  II5 

support;  the  responses  are  ''a  sudden  catching  of  the  breath, 
clutching  randomly  with  the  hands  (the  grasping  reflex  invariably 
appearing  when  the  child  is  dropped),  sudden  closing  of  the  eye- 
lids, puckering  of  the  lips,  then  crying;  in  older  children  possibly 
flight  and  hiding  (not  yet  observed  by  us  as  '  original '  reac- 
tions)." ^  It  is  worthy  of  remark  that  contact  with  a  variety 
of  lower  animals,  or  bright  flashes  of  light,  brought  no  signs  of 
fear. 

Watson  suggests  that  in  fea^  or  in  any  other  strong  emotion, 
the  final  stage  of  behavior  when  stimulation  becomes  sufficiently 
strong,  is  paralysis,  or  what  we  call  in  animals  the  '  death  feint.' 
One  recalls  James'  anecdote  of  his  instinctive  fainting  at  the 
sight  of  blood.  These  and  the  reactions  of  aversion  which  Mc- 
Dougall  ascribes  to  an  instinct  of  disgust  or  repulsion  will  fall 
sufficiently  well  into  the  large  class  of  innate  defense  mechanisms. 
We  learn  very  early  indeed  to  fear  and  avoid  objects  which  were 
not  originally  feared,  but  that  is  another  story.  For  example,  a 
baby  has  no  instinctive  fear  of  the  danger  of  falling,  and  will 
blithely  launch  himself  off  any  elevated  support;  whereas  the 
sight  of  a  yawning  chasm  before  the  experienced  adult  is  a  fright- 
ful object. 

There  are  also  numerous  internal  reactions  connected  with 
fear,  to  which  we  shall  recur  in  our  discussion  of  the  emotions. 

The  instinctive  responses  characteristic  of  rage,  anger,  pugnac- 
ity are  arbitrarily  classed  as  offensive,  although  the  general  effect 
of  them,  too,  is  to  ward  off  interference  with  the  subject's  own 
activities.  The  experiments  described  by  Watson  indicate  that 
the  only  definite  stimulus  to  such  reactions,  in  the  first  few 
months  of  human  life,  is  any  hampering  of  the  infant's  move- 
ments. If  the  face  or  head  is  held,  crying  results,  quickly  followed 
by  screaming.  The  body  stiffens  and  fairly  well-coordinated 
slashing  or  striking  movements  of  the  hands  and  arms  result;  the 
feet  and  legs  are  drawn  up  and  down;  the  breath  is  held  until  the 
child's  face  is  flushed.  In  older  children  the  slashing  movements 
of  the  arms  and  legs  are  better  coordinated,  and  appear  as  kicking, 

^  Watson,  Psychology,  p.  200.  Taken  from  Watson  and  Morgan's  report.  See 
Ibid.,  p.  242,  on  defense  movements. 


Il6  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

slapping,  pushing,  etc.  These  reactions  continue  until  the  irritat- 
ing situation  is  relieved,  and  sometimes  do  not  cease  then.^  Hold- 
ing the  arms  tightly  to  the  sides  has  the  same  result.  The  stimulus 
should  probably  be  broadened  to  include  lack  of  satisfaction  of  an 
appetite.  The  writer  has  observed  that  whenever  a  certain  baby 
of  three  or  four  months  awakened  hungry,  its  first  responses  were 
subdued  crying  and  waving  of  the  arms,  which  were  soon  followed 
by  vigorous  kicks  of  the  legs  and  '  angrier  '  cries. 

There  are  here  also  important  internal  reactions,  which  will  be 
treated  under  emotions.  Biting  is  very  likely  instinctive  in  such 
situations,  at  later  ages.  Throughout  life  a  substantial  core  of 
rage-responses  are  aroused  by  any  thwarting  of  the  agent's  ac- 
tivities, although,  like  all  other  behavior-series,  they  are  con- 
tinually regrouped  by  learning.  The  attitude  of  'picking  a 
fight,'  common  among  boys,  is  probably  sophisticated,  being 
based  on  experience  of  the  thrills  of  successful  combats  which 
were  undertaken  first  at  the  stimulus  of  outside  interference.  The 
'  offensive  '  behavior  manifested  in  the  lower  animals  toward 
their  natural  prey,  must,  of  course,  be  distinguished  from  rage 
or  anger.   It  is  simply  part  of  their  food-getting  instincts. 

Visual  exploration  and  manipulation  appear  to  be  the  instinc- 
tive kernels  to  '  curiosity,'  '  contrivance  '  or  '  workmanship,'  and 
'  desire  for  novelty.'  The  new-born  baby  is  able  to  move  both 
eyes  coordinately  to  fixate  on  a  light,^  and  in  a  few  months  is 
actively  turning  its  head  as  well,  in  the  direction  from  which 
sounds  come.  At  six  months  or  so  it  begins  to  reach  for  any  ob- 
ject of  suitable  size,  to  grasp  it,  to  pass  it  from  hand  to  hand, 
probably  putting  the  object  in  its  mouth.  When  the  child  can 
crawl  its  journeys  are  toward  objects  which  have  been  sighted 
and  which  are  manipulated  with  the  hands  when  approached.^ 
It  is  to  be  noticed  that  none  of  these  objects  is  long  dwelt  on  at  a 
time;  something  new  is  continually  sought.  Such  search  is  per- 
haps explicable  in  terms  of  fatiguing  of  the  first  response,  giving 

'  Watson,  Psychology,  p.  200. 

*  Watson,  op.  a7.,  pp.  243-245.  See  also  his  discussion  of  "positive  and  negative 
reaction  tendencies,"  pp.  248-250. 

3  Cf.  Thorndike,  op.  ciL,  Ch.  X;  Woodworth,  op.  cit.,  pp.  49,  50. 


THE  HUMAN  INSTINCTS  AND  APTITUDES  II7 

the  advantage  to  another  response  toward  a  different  object.  At 
any  rate,  the  desire  for  novelty  is  an  outstanding  trait  throughout 
life,  causing  much  of  the  irksomeness  of  labor  and  of  the  pleasure 
in  travel  and  '  recreation  '  in  general. 

The  parental  instincts  of  the  human  race  are,  of  course,  very 
obscure.  We  have  no  way  of  observing  their  manifestation  un- 
complicated by  training.  Thorndike  follows  McDougall  and 
many  others  in  supposing  that  men,  as  well  as  women,  have  the 
parental  bent;  ^  and  numerous  moralists,  as  is  well  known,  have 
traced  the  altruistic  human  motives  to  this  supposed  instinct. 
There  are  well-developed  parental  instincts  in  many  of  the  lower 
animals,  as  we  sometimes  have  good  reason  to  know  when  we 
trespass  on  their  offspring;  while  the  appeal  of  children  to  nearly 
all  human  beings  seems  greater  than  can  be  accounted  for  on  other 
grounds.  But  these  evidences  are  inconclusive.  The  question 
calls  for  further  investigation. 

The  human  sexual  instincts  are  undoubtedly  far  less  elaborate 
and  specific  than  is  the  case  in  the  lower  animals,  and  much  more 
is  left  to  the  chances  of  learning.  The  appetitive  mechanisms  have 
already  been  referred  to;  the  instincts  paralleling  them  are  re- 
sponses that  are  released  by  the  inner  stimulations  of  the  appe- 
tite. The  sexual  appetite  in  man  is  fairly  well  understood  as  a 
physiological  matter,  but  what  kind  of  instinctive  behavior  would 
result  from  it  apart  from  experience  can  only  be  surmised. 

Watson  believes  that  the  infantile  responses  of  smiling,  gur- 
gling, cessation  of  crying  in  response  to  pressures  on  the  erogenous 
zones,  "including  the  stomach,"  are  in  this  category  of  instincts, 
and  that  the  love  emotions  thus  defined  are  the  source,  by  asso- 
ciation, of  many  if  not  all,  of  our  pleasant  experiences.^  This  is 
essentially  the  Freudian  doctrine,  though  it  is  also  held  by  other 
psychologists  of  pleasure-pain.  As  we  shall  see,  the  most  tenable 
theory  of  pleasure-pain  appears  to  be  on  lines  of  a  complex  of 
inner  reactions,^  and  it  is  not  unlikely  that  at  least  part  of  these 
are  common  to  sexual  excitement  and  other  pleasant  responses. 
But  the  position  that  sex  motives  are  at  the  bottom  of  all  or  nearly 
all  others,  is  an  extreme  one. 

1  Op.  cit.,  Ch.  VIII.  2  Op.  cit.,  pp.  201  flf.  s  Below,  Ch.  X. 


1 1 8  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

The  gregarious  instincts  and  responses  to  social  approval  and 
disapproval  must  be  considered  together,  for  they,  like  the  hy- 
pothetical parental  responses,  are  quite  ill-defined,  perhaps  are 
not  specific  instincts  at  all.^  It  is  the  impression  of  all  students,  so 
far  as  we  are  aware,  that  man  is  naturally  gregarious,  and  tends  to 
keep  himself  in  the  vicinity  of  some  of  his  fellow-creatures.  The 
analogues  among  the  lower  animals,  such  as  bison,  sheep,  geese, 
are  here,  apparently,  not  misleading.  The  growth  of  cities  and 
their  commercial  amusements  appears  to  depend  partly  on  such 
instincts. 

Man  seems  naturally  to  want,  however,  not  merely  the  society 
of  members  of  his  kind,  but  also  their  notice  of  him;  and  not  only 
their  notice  but  their  favorable  regard.  Their  scorn  is  always  un- 
welcome; the  dread  of  it  we  know  as  shyness  or  embarrassment. 
Sometimes  this  imputed  scorn  is  unbearable.  Our  misery  in  a 
'  social  blunder  '  is  a  case  in  point,  and  we  recall  James  Mill's 
observation  that  when  men  suicide  rather  than  face  *  disgrace,' 
they  are  certainly  not  moved  merely  by  the  sensuous  conse- 
quences of  social  ostracism.  That  these  full-fledged  motives  of 
conformity  or  emulation,  as  we  know  them,  are  very  largely  com- 
pounded of  habitual  elements  {'  associations  of  utility  ')  cannot 
be  questioned ;  but  the  enormous  role  which  custom,  fashion,  and 
aspirations  for  fame  or  leadership  has  played  in  all  human  socie- 
ties strongly  suggests  that  they  are  rooted  in  instinctive  desire  for 
praise. 

Under  various  names  such  as  emulation,  pride,  vanity,  desire 
for  social  approval,  this  impulse  has  been  remarked  upon  by 
philosophers  of  all  ages  as  one  of  the  master  human  passions,  and 
most  students  have  thought  that  the  attempt  to  analyze  it  into 
associations  of  sensuous  pleasures  is  a  failure.  We  know  that  very 
young  babies  are  quite  sensitive  to  smiles  and  frowns,  before  any 
punishments  could  be  associated  with  the  latter ;  children  in  gen- 
eral '  love  to  be  bragged  about.'  An  old  couplet  has  it  that 

1  W.  Trotter's  Instincts  of  the  Herd  in  Peace  and  War  is  a  recent  elaboration  of 
this  assumed  group.  Thorndike  follows  James,  McDougall  and  others  in  accepting 
the  group  as  innate,  though  with  some  reservations.  He  gives  some  evidence  other 
than  that  mentioned  above  (Ch.  VIII). 


THE  HUMAN  INSTINCTS  AND  APTITUDES  II9 

Men  the  most  infamous  are  fond  of  fame; 

And  those  who  fear  not  guilt  yet  start  at  shame.^ 

William  James'  remark  that  nine-tenths  of  the  world's  work  is 
done  by  emulation  is  well  known,  also  we  have  noticed  the  elo- 
quent passages  of  Adam  Smith  attributing  economic  activity 
largely  to  it  and  saying  further  that  the  Creator,  through  this 
original  desire  of  human  approval,  has  made  man  His  vice-regent 
to  pass  judgment  on  the  conduct  of  other  men. 

As  to  the  work  of  the  world  being  done  by  emulation,  we  must 
remember  that  these  philosophers  had  in  mind  especially  Anglo- 
Saxons,  whereas  there  are  some  races  which  have  very  little  of  the 
spirit  of  contest.  McDougall  illustrates  the  point  by  relating  that 
he  could  not  interest  the  native  children  of  Borneo  in  games,  be- 
cause they  cared  nothing  for  competition. 

Adam  Smith's  second  observation  hits  the  nail  pretty  well  on 
the  head,  for  that  the  binding  effect  of  mores  or  customary  morals 
the  world  over  is  chiefly  due  to  fear  of  adverse  public  opinion  can 
scarcely  be  doubted.  What  sort  of  conduct  is  approved  or  dis- 
approved by  the  social  group  varies  enormously  from  tribe  to 
tribe,  but  the  great  force  that  holds  the  people  to  whatever  con- 
duct is  thought  good  is  always  the  same,  —  one's  deference  to  the 
regard  of  his  fellows.  If  it  were  not  so,  no  society  could  maintain, 
enough  poHcemen  to  keep  order,  and  few  men  would  wear  stiff 
collars. 

McDougall's  classes  of  gregariousness  and  "self-assertion"  are 
therefore  accepted,  but  his  other  group,  "self-abasement,"  seems 
doubtful.  Hero-worship  is  vmdoubtedly  universal,  but  we  should 
explain  it  as  a  case  of  associative  transfer  of  our  response,  orig- 
inally given  to  social  approval  of  ourselves,  to  such  approval  of 
our  heroes.  Adam  Smith's  similar  explanation  of  our  fawning 
upon  rich  and  successful  people  may  be  recalled.  Envy  and 
jealousy  also  may  be  interpreted  as  baffled  desires  for  our  own 
glorification.  Delight  in  (positive  response  to,  more  accurately 
speaking)  excellence  for  its  own  sake  is  probably  but  a  form  of 
hero-worship,  —  the  thing  is  admirable,  and  admiration  is  in- 
stinctively sought  for,  i.  e.,  considered  good.    James  has  made 

1  Churchill  —  The  Author. 


I20  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

some  observations  along  this  line,  though  not  in  connection  with 
instincts. 

Original  tendencies  relative  to  '  self '  must  be  viewed  cau- 
tiously always.  Either  the  self  is  merely  the  body  of  the  subject, 
and  hence  the  concern  of  all  his  responses,  or  else  it  is  a  concept 
implying  considerable  experience  and  reflection.  We  can  say,  if 
we  like,  that  the  baby  not  only  wants  food  but  wants  it  for  himself, 
but  we  have  not  thereby  made  two  instincts  grow  where  but  one 
grew  before.  The  egoistic  or  altruistic  reference  of  instincts  is  a 
matter  of  description  by  the  observer  of  the  whole  situation.  The 
only  original  impulses  of  distinctly  altruistic  effect  are  in  the 
parental  group,  which  we  have  seen  is  extremely  ill-defined.  Pos- 
sibly these,  or  the  gregarious  group,  may  shade  into  instinctive 
sympathy  and  kindliness,  but  at  any  rate  it  is  clear  that  if  we 
instinctively  seek  the  approval  of  other  people,  we  shall  soon  find 
out  that  one  of  the  surest  means  of  getting  it  is  to  thwart  our  own 
interests  somewhat  for  the  satisfaction  of  some  of  theirs.  It  is  also 
plain  that  the  association  process  goes  far  toward  accounting  for 
sympathy  with  suffering  which  is  close  at  hand.  We  react  away 
from  the  child's  '  sore  finger  '  which  he  is  so  proud  to  show,  be- 
cause it  arouses  images  of  our  own  past  pains,  just  as  we  shrink 
from  the  sharp  knife  which  cut  us  and  hence  is  '  associated  '  with 
pain.  In  the  first  case  there  are  numerous  other  motives  impell- 
ing us  toward  relieving  the  other's  distress,  but  in  part  they  are 
based  (associatively)  on  our  desire  to  wipe  out  the  source  of  un- 
pleasant stimulations  and  to  share  in  the  other  person's  pleasure 
of  relief. 

In  emphasizing  the  '  irrational '  character  of  this  desire  for  ap- 
proval, however,  in  common  with  McDougall  and  most  other 
social  psychologists,  let  us  not  forget,  as  many  of  them  do,  the 
associationists'  proposition  that  associative  recall  does  not  always 
reproduce  all  the  original  ideas.  The  links  that  bind  reactions  to- 
gether often  lose  their  conscious  correlates,  and  so  the  association 
is  inexplicable  so  far  as  introspection  shows.  This  proposition,  as 
we  shall  see,  has  been  fully  vaHdated  by  modern  experimental 
work,  and  so  we  must  make  large  allowance  for  the  many  asso- 
ciations in  everyone's  life  of  forcible  and  disagreeable  repression, 


THE  HUMAN  INSTINCTS  AND  APTITUDES  121 

or  pleasant  sensuous  rewards,  in  connection  with  approval  or  dis- 
approval of  other  people;  and  hence  we  must  leave  the  task  of 
delimiting  the  instinctive  core  of  emulation,  if  there  be  any,  for 
careful  study  in  the  future. 

The  other  emotional  reactions  of  our  list  includes  internal  changes 
to  be  described  in  the  next  chapter;  also  overt  behavior  such  as 
laughing  and  weeping. 

Other  positive  and  negative  reactions  will  be  dealt  with  in  our 
discussion  of  pleasure  and  pain.  They  include  overt  (outwardly- 
observable)  seeking  and  avoiding  responses,  somewhat  like  reach- 
ing for  an  attractive  object  or  jerking  away  from  a  pinch;  and 
also,  probably,  numerous  inner  reactions  of  the  glands,  blood- 
vessels and  other  systems.  Practically  all  original  responses  (in- 
stincts) could  doubtless  be  classed  as  positive  and  negative,  both 
from  the  external  observer's  point  of  view,  and  from  the  stand- 
point of  the  pleasant  or  unpleasant  feeling  of  the  subject.  This 
division  corresponds  roughly  with  Thorndike's  "satisfiers  and 
annoy ers."  ^ 

Other  Alleged  Instincts 

We  can  scarcely  avoid  that  task  which  confronts  every  enum- 
erator of  human  instincts,  namely,  passing  on  the  claims  of 
several  other  candidates  for  the  role.  Imitation,  suggestion,  play, 
rhythm,  construction  (contrivance,  workmanship,  creative  im- 
pulse), property,  habitation,  migration,  greed,  adornment, 
cleanliness,  sympathy,  moral,  religious,  are  some  of  the  names 
which  have  been  used  by  writers  on  the  subject  to  describe  alleged 
instincts  or  groups  of  instincts.  Wallas'  "dispositions"  of  trial 
and  error,  pleasure-pain,  habit  and  thought,  which  he  regards  as 
quasi-instincts,  should  also  be  considered.  What  shall  we  do  with 
them? 

These  words  all  have  pretty  definite  meanings,  and  hence  refer 
to  relatively  stable,  well-defined  modes  of  behavior.  These  modes, 
however,  all  clearly  contain  numerous  learned  elements,  which 
elements,  in  our  opinion,  greatly  predominate  over  the  instinctive 
responses.    Some  of  the  stability  is  also  to  be  ascribed  to  the  gen- 

1  Op.  ciL,  Ch.  IX. 


122  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

eral  bodily  characters  of  the  human  race,  and  to  stable  features 
of  the  environment. 

Psychologists  generally  discredit  imitation  as  an  instinct, 
though  Thorndike  believes  there  are  a  few  particular  imitative 
responses,  such  as  smiling  when  smiled  at.  Experimental  work  on 
lower  animals  seems  to  demonstrate  that  a  new  trick  is  not 
learned  any  more  rapidly  by  one  animal  if  another  of  his  species 
who  has  learned  it,  demonstrates  before  him.^  Most  of  the  imita- 
tive responses  of  the  child  can  be  accounted  for  in  terms  of  the 
conditioned  reflex  (learning),  and  imitating  habits.  Of  course 
there  is  no  question  that  imitative  learning,  whatever  its  relation 
to  instinct,  plays  an  enormously  important  role  in  all  human 
affairs.  We  shall  have  occasion  to  notice  this  aspect  in  later 
chapters.  Suggestion  also  is  believed  to  be  reducible  to  learning; 
it  is,  in  general,  one  case  of  '  mistaken  inference,'  which,  as  we 
shall  see,  characterizes  all  learning  to  some  degree. 

Play,  habitation  and  migration  would  be  important  for  eco- 
nomics if  they  proved  to  have  large  instinctive  elements  not  al- 
ready accounted  for.  The  play  of  the  child  seems  to  be  the  sum  of 
all  activities  developing  from  his  manipulative,  vocal,  visual,  ex- 
plorative, locomotive  and  other  specific  responses,  regulated  by 
his  general  appetites  of  exercise  and  fatigue.  Imitation  of  his 
elders  plainly  has  a  great  part  in  determining  the  particular  forms. 
The  '  play  '  or  amusement  impulses  of  the  adult,  which  are  con- 
trasted with  work  activities,  contain  manipulative  and  explora- 
tive ('  curiosity  ')  interests,  and  also  the  important  affective 
element  of  aversion  to  the  compulsion  which  work  involves. 

Sympathy,  devotion,  the  '  moral  sense,'  have  already  in  effect 
been  dealt  with  under  the  heads  of  parental  behavior  and  positive 
responses  to  the  approval  of  other  people.  Religious  behavior 
contains  the  same  elements,  and  in  addition,  by  numerous  asso- 
ciative transfers,  fear-constituents.  The  adornment  or  esthetic 
impulses  generally,  as  they  appear  in  adults,  clearly  involve  re- 
sponses to  social  approval,  positive  differential  responses  to  colors 
and  forms  (a  baby  will  show  preferences  in  this  respect  before 

1  Watson,  Behavior,  Ch.  VIII;  cf.  Thorndike,  Ch.  VIII,  and  McDougall, 
Ch.  IV. 


TEE  HUMAN  INSTINCTS  AND  APTITUDES  1 23 

associations  seem  to  account  for  them),  and  the  physiological 
cycles  involved  in  rhythm.^  We  are  certainly  not  prepared  to 
deny  that  other  clear  instinctive  elements  may  yet  be  demon- 
strated. 

Property,  acquisitiveness,  greed,  hoarding,  collection  are  often 
asserted  to  be  instinctive.  If  they  are,  in  any  useful  sense,  econ- 
omists want  to  know  it.  Modern  psychologists  do  not  make  much 
of  this  group.  Thorndike  thinks  man  has  tendencies  to  hoard 
food,  but  that  the  innate  kernel  is  so  soon  and  so  completely  over- 
laid by  associations  of  the  utilities  of  property,  that  the  enjoy- 
ment of  the  latter  is  almost  wholly  derived  from  such  associations.^ 

There  are  three  kinds  of  evidence  for  such  an  instinct:  (i)  the 
hoardings  of  some  animals,  such  as  squirrels  and  dogs;  (2)  the 
collecting  craze  which  nearly  everyone  has  at  some  period  of  life, 
with  regard  to  stamps,  coins,  books,  etc.;  and  (3)  the  infant's 
stout  defense  of  his  '  property  '  in  playthings.  The  last-named  is 
often  a  mere  dog-in-the-manger  attitude;  he  is  busy  with  some- 
thing else,  but  when  another  child  attempts  to  use  his  toys,  he 
comes  promptly  to  repel  the  invader.  In  the  child,  it  is  a  matter  of 
original  '  curiosity,'  —  looking  at,  reaching  for,  grasping  any 
small  object  not  feared;  and  instinctive  rage  responses  if  the  ob- 
ject held  is  forcibly  removed.  Parents  have  frequent  occasion  to 
take  objects  away  from  children,  and  it  is  an  easy  transfer  of  the 
rage  which  such  dispossession  engenders  to  the  stimulus  of  other- 
wise losing  some  object  which  the  child  is  accustomed  to  manip- 
ulate. The  other  two  lines  of  evidence  are  not  valuable.  Imitation 
and  acquired  interest  make  the  collector ;  and  but  few  animals, 
not  including  the  apes,  are  known  to  hoard.  Desire  for  ownership 
is  rather  a  mode  of  behavior  which  works  out  from  the  interplay 
of  plastic,  teachable  human  nature  with  the  stable  condition  of 
limited  supplies  of  desired  external  objects.^ 

In  workmanship,  contrivance  or  construction,  so  far  as  man- 
kind is  concerned,  the  manipulative  and  visual-explorative  re- 

^  Such  as  heart  beat,  respiration,  alimentary  cycles,  sleep,  pendular  actions  of 
the  limbs. 

2  Ch.  VIII.  He  refers  to  C.  F.  Burk,  "The  Collecting  Instinct,"  Ped.  Sem., 
7:  179-207  (1900). 

'  Cf.  Watson,  Psychology,  pp.  254,  255. 


124  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

sponses  are  prominent.  Watson  says  "This  instinctive  tendency 
(manipulation)  is  sometimes  exalted  by  calling  it  constructive- 
ness,"  ^  and  Thorndike's  view  is  similar.  We  have  noticed  that 
there  are  original  differential  positive  reactions,  i.  e.,  'preferences' 
of  the  child  among  objects  at  hand ;  and  these  are  probably  ex- 
tremely important  in  artistic  creativeness.  The  purely  instinctive 
kernel  of  manipulation  may  be  described  in  Watson's  words : 

To  reach  out  for  objects,  to  scrape  them  along  the  floor,  to  pick  them  up, 
put  them  into  the  mouth,  to  throw  them  upon  the  floor,  to  move  back  and 
forth  any  parts  which  can  be  moved,  is  one  of  the  best  grounded  and  best 
observed  of  the  instincts. 

Before  there  is  any  real  construction  or  creation  in  question,  a 
vast  amount  of  learning  or  consolidations  among  other  instincts 
must  be  achieved.  The  desire  for  excellence  or  art  for  its  own 
sake  is  probably  moulded  largely  out  of  instinctive  and  associa- 
tive desires  for  social  approval,  quite  on  associationist  principles. 
(We  consider  the  mechanics  of  associative  learning  below,  Ch.  XI.) 

The  supposed  instinct  of  constructiveness  or  workmanship  has 
been  exploited  most  vigorously  by  Veblen,  and  it  will  be  instruc- 
tive to  consider  his  statements  as  rather  typical  of  a  sociologist's 
handling  of  the  instinct-concept. 

He  insists  that  criticisms  of  his  concept  from  the  physiological 
point  of  view  are  irrelevant,  ''instinct,  being  not  a  neurological  or 
physiological  concept."  "It  is  enough  to  note,"  he  says,  "that  in 
human  behaviour  this  disposition  is  effective  in  such  consistent, 
ubiquitous  and  resilient  fashion  that  students  of  human  culture 
will  have  to  count  with  it  as  one  of  the  integral  hereditary  traits  of 
mankind."  ^  Just  how  a  behavior-trait  can  be  hereditary  without 
hereditary  neurological  mechanisms  we  are  left  to  surmise,  and 
the  question  remains  open  as  to  whether  the  workmanUke  pro- 
pensities are  really  biologically  hereditary  and  unitary.  It  is  true 
that  the  general  facts  of  heredity  were  inferred  from  gross  ob- 
servations before  much  was  known  of  the  physiology  involved; 
but  the  chance  of  misinterpretation  is  so  great  in  this  method  that 
we  can  hardly  afford  to  disregard  the  evidence  of  physiology.   It 

^  Watson,  Psychology,  p.  260. 

2  The  Instinct  of  Workmanship  (1913),  p.  28.   (Macmillan  edition.) 


THE  HUMAN  INSTINCTS  AND  APTITUDES  1 25 

was  exactly  by  such  methods  as  Veblen's  that  the  religious,  moral, 
self-preservation,  and  numerous  other  instincts  were  '  proved  ' 
to  exist. 

Again,  Veblen  says  that  the  position  of  the  instinct  of  work- 
manship 

is  somewhat  peculiar,  in  that  its  functional  content  is  serviceabiUty  for 
the  ends  of  Ufe,  whatever  these  ends  may  be;  whereas  these  ends  to  be  sub- 
served are,  at  least  in  the  main,  appointed  and  made  worth  while  by  the 
various  other  instinctive  dispositions.  ...  It  has  essentially  to  do  with 
proximate  rather  than  ulterior  ends.  Yet  workmanship  is  none  the  less  an 
object  of  attention  and  sentiment  in  its  own  right.  Efficient  use  of  the  means 
at  hand  and  adequate  management  of  the  resources  available  for  the  pur- 
poses of  life  is  itself  an  end  of  endeavour,  and  accomplishment  of  this  kind  is 
a  source  of  gratification.^ 

Later  he  avers  that  the  "parental  bent"  is  the  main  instmctive 
end  which  the  workmanlike  bent  subserves  (p.  48).  Such  are  the 
consequences  to  which  McDougall's  conception  of  instinct  may 
be  carried;  the  instincts  are  elves  which  have  various  tasks  to  per- 
form but  have  discretion  as  to  the  exact  method  of  performance; 
the  propensity  of  workmanship  is  a  sprite  of  lower  rank  whose 
mission  is  to  develop  mechanical  ways  and  means,  —  also  in  no 
predetermined  manner,  but  always  it  must  be  economically, 
frugally,  efl&ciently.  Both  ranks  of  propensities  are  identified 
partially  by  the  subjective  feeling- tone,  —  '  gratification.'  What 
Veblen  calls  the  instinct  of  workmanship  is  what  other  people 
have  called  intelligence. 

It  is  true  that  the  manipulative  and  inquisitive  responses  do 
subserve  the  parental;  and  so  in  fact  does  each  instinct  subserve 
every  other  by  helping  to  keep  the  body  alive.  More  than  that, 
original  grasping,  etc.,  leads  to  a  large  part  of  our  learning  of  the 
properties  of  objects,  and  hence  is  especially  to  be  prized  on  that 
account.  But  when  the  instinctive  manipulative  and  emulative 
responses  are  active  (when  '  workmanship  '  is  undertaken  '  as  an 
end  in  itself '),  then  the  other  response  systems  are  inactive. 
When  the  instinctive  elements  of  the  parental  responses  are  ac- 
tive, some  of  these  same  manipulative  or  grasping  reflexes  must 
necessarily  be  brought  into  play,  but  the  organization  and  the 

^  The  Instinct  of  Workmanship,  pp.  31,  32. 


126  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

consciousness  of  the  total  response  are  quite  distinctive.  The  most 
savage  mother  has  learned  many  habits  which  are  used  in  protect- 
ing and  caring  for  her  child. 

Veblen  sees  the  bias  of  instinctive  workmanship  running 
through  all  human  societies,  in  the  trend  toward  greater  and 
greater  mechanical  efficiency.  People  instinctively  want  to  do 
their  jobs  well,  he  thinks,  without  any  waste,  and  they  constantly 
search  for  better,  more  economical  methods.  This  particular  self- 
conscious  instinct-elf  is  still  further  removed  from  our  own  con- 
ception of  instinct,  than  is  the  workmanship-instinct  conceived  as 
a  simple  mechanician  for  the  parental  proclivity.  The  attitude  of 
doing  a  thing  well,  though  there  be  no  profit  in  it,  is  a  complex 
matter,  much  permeated  with  associations  of  approval  from  fel- 
low-creatures, and  embracing  also  the  multitude  of  various  innate 
mechanisms  which  make  specialists  supremely  interested  in  their 
own  particular  activity. 

This  apparent  drift  toward  economy  of  effort  and  the  ceaseless 
development  of  human  technology,  we  attribute  to  that  human 
capacity  for  learning,  for  forming  habits,  for  adapting  our  in- 
stinct-mechanisms to  our  pecuHar  situations,  which  is  the  chief 
glory  of  our  race,  rather  than  to  any  supposed  improvement- 
instinct.  If  we  had  to  depend  entirely  on  our  instincts,  as  our 
friends  the  shell-fish  and  insects  almost  do,  our  race  might  survive 
and  perhaps  we  should  all  be  happier,^  but  our  technology  would 
never  change.  Since  our  action  systems  happen  to  be  plastic,  and 
permit  of  wide  learning,  however,  the  human  '  bent '  toward 
economy  follows  from  the  attempts  of  all  our  instinctive  or  habit- 
ual want-mechanisms  to  act  themselves  out  when  stimulated,  and 
the  thwarting  of  part  of  them  by  the  scarcity  of  desired  goods  in 
the  world  outside.  This  bent,  clearly,  is  operative  first  of  all 
through  individuals,  and  so  occasionally  a  man  finds  that  the 
most  effective  way  to  satisfy  his  own  wants  is  to  prevent  a  number 
of  other  people  from  satisfying  their  wants,  —  that  is,  he  seeks  the 
largest  measure  of  want-satisfaction  for  himself,  rather  than  the 
largest  possible  social  utiHty.  Veblen's  savage,  whose  workman- 

^  See  the  fanciful  narrative  detailing  the  superior  adaptiveness  of  insects  in  W.  M. 
Wheeler,  "The  Termitodoxa, or  Biology  and  Society,"  Scientific  Monthly,  lo:  113- 

124  (1920). 


THE  HUMAN  INSTINCTS  AND  APTITUDES  1 27 

like  instinct  is  centered  on  economy  for  the  benefit  of  the  whole 
community,  has  much  in  common  with  the  amiable  savage  of 
Rousseau. 

Similar  considerations  apply  to  Taussig's  '  instinct  of  contriv- 
ance' but  in  less  degree.  The  analogues  of  contrivance  in  the 
lower  animals  —  the  dams  of  beavers,  the  nests  of  birds,  etc.  — 
are  clearly  stable  and  inheritable,  though  very  intricate,  combina- 
tions of  reflexes,  adjusted  to  a  limited  number  of  stimuli  in  the 
creature's  normal  environment.  All  animals  have  some  capacity 
for  learning,  hence  these  behavior-types  are  not  absolutely  stable 
and  uniform,  but  the  plasticity  of  behavior  is  so  hmited  that  the 
animals'  technology  varies  little  from  generation  to  generation. 
Man's  instinctive  contrivance,  on  the  other  hand,  is  so  quickly 
overlaid  by  the  habits  of  experience,  so  soon  assumes  a  bewilder- 
ing variety  of  forms,  that  we  cannot  tell  just  what  the  instinctive 
kernel  is.  It  is  a  little  like  the  hypothetical  instinctive  basis  of 
speech. 

Meaning  of  'General  Innate  Tendencies' 

Nevertheless  this  conception  entertained  by  so  many  social 
psychologists,  of  general  innate  tendencies  or  gifts  or  bents  toward 
certain  kinds  of  activity,  in  which  the  exact  responses  are  not  pre- 
determined, has  an  important  place  in  our  psychological  funda- 
mentals. We  have  already  spoken  of  aptitudes.  An  aptitude 
means  here  not  a  specific  response  to  definite  stimuH,  but  a  certain 
limitation  in  the  subject's  range  of  educability,  by  physiological 
structures  which  are  grosser  than  reflex  circuits,  —  these  grosser 
limiting  structures  being  hereditary  and  varying  between  in- 
dividuals. A  few  paragraphs  from  Woodworth  state  the  situation 
concisely : 

That  there  are  native  capacities  appears  not  only  on  comparing  one  in- 
dividual with  another,  or  one  family  with  another,  but  by  comparing  the 
human  species  with  animals.  Language  is  characteristically  human,  while 
finding  the  way  home  is  apparently  a  stronger  aptitude  in  birds,  especially. 
Counting  and  dealing  with  number  relations  are  certainly  human,  as  is  the 
power  of  using  objects  as  tools. 

Native  capacities  differ  from  instincts  in  that  they  do  not  provide  ready- 
made  reactions  to  stimuli.  We  do  not  expect  the  musically  gifted  child  to 
break  out  in  song  at  some  special  stimulus,  and  thus  reveal  his  musical  gift. 


128  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

We  expect  him  to  show  an  interest  in  music,  to  learn  it  readily,  remember  it 
well,  and  perhaps  show  some  originality  in  the  way  of  making  up  pieces  for 
himself.  His  native  gift  amounts  to  a  specific  interest  and  an  ability  to  learn 
specific  things.  The  gifted  individual  is  not  one  who  can  do  certain  things 
without  learning,  but  one  who  can  learn  those  things  very  readUy. 

There  would  be  Kttle  profit  in  attempting  an  inventory  of  this  side  of 
native  equipment.  We  should  simply  have  to  enumerate  the  various  occupa- 
tions of  mankind,  and  the  various  classes  of  objects  in  which  he  finds  an 
interest,  and  in  dealing  with  which  he  shows  facihty.' 

Neither  Woodworth  nor  any  other  psychologist,  so  far  as  we 
know,  tells  us  what  may  be  the  neural  basis  of  these  abilities;  but 
evidently  it  is  to  some  degree  provided  by  the  hereditary  or- 
ganization of  certain  parts  of  the  nervous  system,  which  Hmit  the 
nimiber  of  connections  or  habits  which  it  is  possible  for  that  in- 
dividual to  acquire  in  a  given  class  of  responses,  or  at  least  deter- 
mine the  facility  with  which  new  coimections  in  that  class  can  be 
acquired. 

These  hypothetical  structures  are  to  particular  abilities,  prob- 
ably, what  the  cerebral  cortex  is  to  general  educabihty  as  a  whole. 
The  animals  (and  some  abnormal  human  beings)  whose  heredi- 
tary anatomical  endowment  includes  an  inferior  cerebral  cortex, 
are  incapable  of  much  learning;  while  normal  man,  with  the  larger 
brain,  is  the  least  limited  of  all  animals  in  range  of  possible  new 
reflexes,  that  is,  of  learning  and  acquiring  new  interests.  No 
particular  habit  is  determined  by  the  size  of  the  brain,  but  the 
general  range  of  habit-formation  is  thus  determined. 

Now  in  certain  connections  a  sociologist  may  generalize  about 
'  the  disposition  of  habit-formation  '  (which,  we  shall  see,  is  but 
another  name  for  trial  and  error,  learning,  reasoning,  all  at  once) 
to  good  purpose.  So  also  of  the  smaller  ranges  of  educability,  as 
the  taste  for  music  or  for  contrivance,  or  the  spirit  of  enterprise 
or  the  talent  for  oratory.  But  what  generalizations  can  accurately 
be  made  about  any  given  one  of  these  vague  propensities,  which 
are  by  definition  an  uncertain  blend  of  nature  and  nurture,  is  a 
more  difficult  question  even  than  the  corresponding  task  with  an 
instinct. 

They  are  not  instincts.  But  what  does  it  matter  which  name  we 
use?  The  main  danger  in  social  science  from  an  uncritical  use  of 

1  op.  ciL,  p.  59. 


THE  HUMAN  INSTINCTS  AND  APTITUDES  1 29 

the  term  '  instinct,'  is  that  qualities  characteristic  of  one  instinct 
or  appetite  are  liable  to  be  freely  generalized  as  belonging  to  all 
'  instincts,'  and  fallacious  arguments  may  be  drawn  from  this 
assumption.  For  example,  it  is  now  rather  common  to  assume 
that  all  instincts  are  subject  to  the  Freudian  formulae  of  repres- 
sion and  sublimation  —  that  if  any  one  is  baffled  it  will  break  out 
in  nervous  disorders,  and  that  its  motive  force  can  usually  be 
diverted  into  socially  beneficial  channels  if  you  find  the  right 
substitutes.^  Our  discussion  of  the  appetites  of  sex,  hunger,  exer- 
cise and  so  on,  has  shown  that  there  are  periodic  chemical  secre- 
tions in  the  body,  or  deficits  connected  with  them,  which  render 
these  appetites  difficult  if  not  impossible  completely  and  per- 
manently to  repress,  but  such  a  condition  apparently  does  not 
exist  in  others  of  the  instinctive  groups,  such  as  attack  and  de- 
fense, fear,  emulation,  curiosity  and  mam'pulation  or  workman- 
ship. The  discomfort  of  monotonous  labor  may  be  due  to  the 
baffling  of  the  latter  instincts,  but  it  may  on  the  other  hand  be 
traced  to  fatigue  of  the  special  processes  constantly  employed  and 
to  the  appetite  for  exercise  of  the  others  not  used.  The  net  result 
of  the  two  explanations  in  this  case,  sociologically,  happens  to  be 
much  the  same ;  but  in  other  cases,  as  in  the  query  suggested  by 
Wallas,  that  perhaps  the  instinct  of  fear  is  being  baulked  too 
much  in  modern  society,  the  results  might  be  vastly  different. 
The  point  is  that  the  differing  mechanisms  of  appetites,  instincts 
and  innate  general  aptitudes  make  it  unsafe  to  carry  over  gen- 
eralizations from  one  class  to  another. 

^  E.  g.,  Wallas:  "For  we  cannot,  in  St.  Paul's  sense,  '  mortify  '  our  dispositions. 
If  they  are  not  stimulated,  they  do  not  therefore  die.  If  we  leave  unstimulated,  or, 
to  use  a  shorter  term,  if  we  '  baulk  '  any  one  of  our  main  dispositions,  Curiosity, 
Property,  Trial  and  Error,  Sex  and  the  rest,  we  produce  in  ourselves  a  state  of 
nervous  strain."  —  Great  Society,  p.  65. 

This  doctrine,  which  has  been  popularized  by  the  Freudian  School,  has  been 
swallowed  whole  by  a  number  of  social  scientists,  such  as  Carleton  Parker.  J.  M. 
Clark  appears  to  accept  it  on  Wallas'  authority  ("Economics  and  Modern  Psychol- 
ogy," Jour.  Pol.  Econ.,  27:  1-30).  E.  R.  Groves,  "  Sociology  and  Psycho-analytic 
Psychology;  An  Interpretation  of  the  Freudian  Hypothesis,"  Am.  Jour.  SocioL, 
2y.  107-116  (1917)  naturally  says,  "It  is  Freud's  theory  of  the  sublimation  of  in- 
stincts that  most  interests  the  sociologist,"  and  he  speaks  of  the  instincts  gener- 
ally as  "clamoring  for  gratification." 


I30  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

The  distinction  between  instinct  and  intelligence,  nature  and 
nurture,  is,  after  all,  of  great  moment,  for  nurture  is  amenable  to 
our  control  in  a  much  different  way  than  nature.  For  most  pur- 
poses it  is  not  serviceable  to  lump  them  together.  The  question  is 
in  each  case,  how  many  of  the  phenomena  attributed  to  instinct 
are  really  the  result  of  innate,  inheritable  and  substantially  in- 
eradicable human  behavior-mechanisms. 

There  is,  of  course,  no  need  of  keeping  track  of  the  minute  ele- 
ments if  you  are  sure  you  have  a  stable  and  accurately  definable 
higher  unit.  A  shoe  manufacturer  need  not  bother  about  the 
separate  tissues  composing  the  human  foot.  A  behavior-unit 
likewise,  to  be  stable  enough  for  sociological  handling,  need  not 
consist  wholly  of  instinctive  elements,  it  may  include  such  modi- 
fications thereof  as  the  normal  man's  environment  are  sure  to 
make;  and  it  is  clear  that  such  a  propensity  as  '  the  desire  to  get 
the  greatest  wealth  for  the  least  sacrifice  of  goods  or  labor  '  meets 
this  specification  pretty  well.  But  if  the  behavior  designated  as 
'  workmanship  '  or  as  the  result  of  some  other  *  instinct '  is  quite 
variable  in  different  times  and  places,  because  the  elementary 
responses  are  modified  by  diverse  environments,  then  the  concept 
of  instinct  of  workmanship  will  be  no  more  serviceable  than  its 
predecessors,  the  moral,  religious  or  imitative  instincts. 

It  would  be  desirable,  before  we  leave  the  topic  of  the  nature 
and  number  of  instincts,  to  examine  the  Freudian  contributions. 
But  we  shall  discuss  in  another  connection  the  more  important 
points  of  this  school's  doctrines,  and  here  it  may  be  said  that  their 
inventory  of  instincts  is  the  point  of  least  agreement  among 
themselves.  They  agree  in  attaching  overwhelming  importance 
to  the  sexual  impulses,  but  if  they  admit  independent  motives, 
they  talk  vaguely  of  the  '  instinct  of  self-preservation,'  or  the 
'  stream  of  desire  '  or  '  the  libido,'  to  which  concepts  we  have  al- 
ready paid  our  respects.  It  is  the  natural  result  of  their  reliance 
on  subjective  and  gross  behavior  data,  with  little  attempt  to 
check  up  the  neural  correlates.  Professors  Holt  and  Watson  have 
made  notable  contributions  to  psychology  by  interpreting  the 
Freudian  results  in  terms  of  modern  physiological  concepts. 


CHAPTER  X 

EMOTION,  PLEASURE  AND  PAIN 

Emotions  Believed  to  be  Conscious  Correlates  or 
Certain  Instincts 

With  the  modern  theory  of  instmct-mechanisms  in  mind,  we  are 
now  equipped  to  make  some  headway  on  the  connection  of  the 
instincts  with  emotions,  and  with  pain  and  pleasure,  thus  fitting 
our  old  friends  the  feelings  into  the  structures  of  motives  and 
action. 

It  is  one  of  the  merits  of  McDougall's  book  that  he  emphasized 
the  important  correlation  between  instincts  and  emotions.  To 
him  the  principal  elementary  emotions  are  inseparable  parts  of  the 
primary  instincts,  on  the  schemes  we  have  already  exhibited.  He 
protests  against  definitions  of  instinct  which  run  simply  in  terms  of 
reflexes,  for  they  leave  Hamlet  out  of  the  play  altogether.  The 
conscious  entity,  or  emotion,  is  the  real  nucleus  of  the  instinct  to 
him.   He  defines  an  instinct,  therefore,  as 

an  inherited  or  innate  psychophysical  disposition  which  determines  its  pos- 
sessor to  perceive,  and  to  pay  attention  to,  objects  of  a  certain  class,  to  ex- 
perience an  emotional  excitement  of  a  particular  quahty  upon  perceiving 
such  an  object,  and  to  act  in  regard  to  it  in  a  particular  manner,  or,  at  least, 
to  experience  an  impulse  to  such  action.^ 

This  '  psychophysical  disposition  '  is  indeed  based  on  ''a  com- 
pound system  of  sensorimotor  arcs"  (about  which  McDougall  has 
little  more  to  say  in  the  book) ;  but  after  the  agent  has  pricked  up 
his  ears  toward  the  exciting  object,  we  are  given  to  understand, 
his  behavior  can  no  longer  be  predicted  from  the  most  complete 
knowledge  of  the  reflex  arcs.^  1^ 

The  intimate  connection  between  instinct  and  emotion  had 
indeed  been  brought  into  prominence  by  James  about  1885.   An 

^  Op.  cit.,  Ch.  I,  p.  29. 

2  This  insistence  on  a  quasi-intelligent,  groping  consciousness  as  an  essential 
part  of  the  general  concept  of  instinct  is  rather  general  among  the  British  psy- 
chologists who  treat  of  the  subject.    Lloyd  Morgan's  phrase  "persistency  with 


132  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

emotion,  he  believed,  is  a  sudden  complex  of  bodily  sensations 
arising  from  our  instinctive  reactions  toward  appropriate  stimuli. 
The  sight  of  a  ferocious  animal  coming  toward  us,  for  example, 
stimulates  reflexly  in  us  by  means  of  our  inherited  neural  connec- 
tions, about  the  same  kinds  of  reactions  that  the  cat  inspires  in 
the  mouse, — various  twitchings  and  tremblings  and  movements 
of  running  away,  palpitations  of  the  heart,  glandular  actions  such 
as  perspiration  secretions,  also  the  various  reactions  which  we 
describe  as  dryness  of  the  throat,  heaviness  in  the  pit  of  the 
stomach,  and  others  which  we  cannot  localize.  Reflexes  of  the 
vasomotor  system,  causing  blushing  and  paleness,  of  the  facial 
muscles,  and  of  glands  such  as  those  secreting  tears,  are  of  course 
prominent  in  the  expression  of  emotions. 

So  that  James  said  it  is  probably  not  true,  as  appears  to  com- 
mon sense  (and  to  some  psychologists,  as  McDougall)  that  we 
experience  the  emotion  in  consciousness  and  then  proceed  to 
'  express  '  it  by  appropriate  actions;  but  we  are  angry  because  we 
strike  (and  have  other  simultaneous  reactions),  are  afraid  because 
we  tremble  and  run  away,  are  sorry  because  we  cry.  The  reac- 
tions and  the  emotional  consciousness,  that  is,  occur  at  the  same 
time,  the  latter  being  the  complex  of  sensations  arising  from  the 
former.  That  James,  no  less  than  McDougall,  recognized  the 
constant  coordination  of  emotion  and  instinct  may  be  seen  from 
his  (James')  statement: 

Every  object  that  excites  an  instinct  excites  an  emotion  as  well.  The  only 
distinction  one  may  draw  is  that  the  reaction  called  emotional  terminates  in 
the  subject's  own  body,  whUst  the  reaction  called  instinctive  is  apt  to  go 
farther  and  enter  into  practical  relations  with  the  exciting  object.^ 

varied  effort"  is  enlarged  on  by  Stout,  to  the  point  that  "instinctive  activity  essen- 
tially involves  intelligent  consciousness  "  (Manual  of  Psy.,  p.  347).  At  a  symposium 
of  British  psychologists  on  instinct  and  intelligence  in  191 1,  C.  E.  Myers  said 
"To  my  mind,  it  is  certain  that  on  the  occasion  of  the  chick's  first  peck  or  the  duck- 
ling's first  swim  the  bird  is  dimly,  of  course  very  dimly,  conscious  of  the  way  in 
which  it  is  about  to  act "  (Brit.  Jour.  Psy.,  Vol.  Ill,  pt.  iii).  Doubtless  most  of  what 
these  authorities  say  about  "attention"  and  "interest"  being  correlated  with  first 
performances  is  true,  but  the  "persistency"  must  be  attributed,  as  we  have  ex- 
plained, to  the  existence  of  several  pre-established  mechanisms  which  are  succes- 
sively aroused,  unless  "  consciousness  "  is  supposed  to  have  a  magic  power  of  direction 
of  action. 

1  Briefer  Course,  Ch.  XXIV,  p.  371. 


EMOTION,  PLEASURE  AND  PAIN  133 

Evidence  Pro  and  Con 

Recent  studies  have  partially  confirmed  as  well  as  amplified  the 
James-Lange  view.  The  experimental  work  of  Sherrington,  to  be 
sure,  seemed  to  show  that  dogs  whose  visceral  sense-organs  had 
been  disconnected  from  the  brain  were  still  capable  of  experienc- 
ing emotion;  but  Herrick  thinks  the  experiments  were  not  very 
convincing.^  Cannon's  excellent  investigations  on  the  physio- 
logical basis  of  certain  emotional  states  indicate  that  the  bodily 
changes  are  the  same  in  different  emotions,  and  hence  that  the 
sensations  from  them  cannot  give  the  full  quality  of  the  emotion. 
It  is  not  pretended,  however,  that  Cannon  or  anyone  else  has 
reached  an  even  tolerably  complete  analysis  of  all  the  reactions 
correlated  with  the  emotions  and  so  the  James-Lange  theory,  with 
few  amendments,  remains  the  leading  hypothesis.  A  number  of 
psychologists,  it  is  true,  appear  not  to  agree  to  the  instinctive 
basis  of  emotions;  for  instance  Stout  says  an  emotion  is  "a  unique 
kind  of  feeling-attitude  towards  an  object."  ^  But  if  such  au- 
thors are  pressed  as  to  the  neural  correlates  of  this  unique  and 
innate  consciousness,  they  will  be  driven  to  postulate  some  in- 
stinctive organization  of  reflex  circuits.  Without  adopting  any 
particular  view  as  to  the  sensational  or  other  elements  in  the 
emotional  consciousness,  therefore,  we  are  fully  justified  in  assum- 
ing that  in  some  way  the  emotions  are  all  underlain  by  instinctive 
responses. 

A  kind  of  evidence  which  the  present  writer  has  not  seen  con- 
sidered by  the  authorities  is  the  alternation  he  has  observed  of 
emotional  states,  which  is  strikingly,  comparable  to  '  retinal 
rivalry  '  and  analogous  alternations  of  antagonistic  responses. 
After  a  period  of  depression  or  elation  lasting  an  hour  or  so,  one 
finds  his  mood  changing  even  though  the  situation  has  not  altered. 
The  responses  of  the  first,  apparently,  have  become  fatigued,  and 
so  the  others  are  released.  (See  below,  Ch.  XI,  on  alternation  of 
responses  in  learning.) 

Whether  all  or  any  instincts  are  always  emotional  is  another 
question,  and  is  a  part  of  the  general  problem  of  the  physiological 

1  op.  cit.,  p.  288.  2  Qp_  cit.,  p.  418. 


134  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

conditions  of  consciousness.  Some  inherited  reflexes,  such  as  those 
of  the  heart  and  other  viscera,  involve  no  consciousness  at  all,  and 
there  are  also  habitual  responses  which  were  conscious  at  the 
time  of  learning,  Uke  the  movements  of  writing,  but  which  hav6 
*  decayed  '  into  unconsciousness  except  when  the  subject's  '  at- 
tention '  is  upon  them.  It  seems  possible  that  there  are  instinctive 
acts  also  which  may  become  unconscious  at  times,  such  as  eating, 
when  the  focus  of  the  subject's  activity  is  elsewhere.  Professor 
Holt's  suggestion,  that  one  is  always  conscious  of  that  object  to 
which  his  body  as  a  whole  is  responding  ^ — be  it  the  sound  of  the 
imaginal  spoken  words,  the  form  of  the  marks  on  the  paper,  the 
movements  of  the  pen,  or  the  tree  out  of  the  window  —  is  one  of 
the  most  satisfactory  statements  of  the  relation,  for  such  object 
clearly  does  correspond  closely  to  the  focal  point  of  attention. 
Whether  or  not  the  emotion  is  experienced,  then,  when  the  in- 
stinctive apparatus  is  active,  may  be  found  to  depend  on  the 
place  the  latter  occupies  in  the  subject's  total  response  at  the 
moment.  In  that  case  McDougall's  theory  of  emotion  as  the  true 
heart  of  instinct  will  be  relegated  to  a  purely  subjective  psy^ 
chology. 

Emotional  '  Drives  '  in  Motives 

Now  what  place  have  the  emotions  in  human  motives?  Are 
they  the  drive  behind  all  action,  as  has  been  proverbial,  while  the 
reason  or  intelligence  is  merely  the  directing  agency?  Are  the  two 
respectively  the  '  gasoline  '  and  the  '  steering-gear  '  ?  ^  From  our 
discussions  it  is  clear  that  the  emotions  as  conscious  states  cannot 
be  regarded  as  motive  powers,  without  resort  to  the  mystical 
principle  of  interaction  between  radically  different  entities  called 
'  mind  '  and  '  body.'  But  the  general  opinion  that  emotions  are 
powerful  (not  necessarily  the  only)  movers  to  action  is  verified 
when  we  investigate  further  the  physiological  mechanisms  of 
them,  that  is,  of  the  instincts. 

Cannon  foimd  ^  that  the  reactions  which  he  studied,  connected 
with  emotional  excitement,  are  such  as  put  the  body  into  a  state 

^  See  the  Freudian  Wish,  Supplement,  pp.  172  flf. 

2  The  old-fashioned  metaphor  was  "Reason  the  card;  passion  the  gale." 

^  W.  B.  Cannon,  Bodily  Changes  in  Pain,  Hunger,  Fear  and  Rage  (1915). 


EMOTION,  PLEASURE  AND  PAIN  1 35 

of  extra  preparedness  for  strenuous  efforts.  Experiments  re- 
vealed that  in  fear,  pain  and  rage  the  adrenal  glands  are  stimu- 
lated reflexly  to  secrete  their  specific  product,  adrenalin,  into  the 
blood,  where  in  turn  it  stimulates  an  outpouring  of  sugar  from  the 
liver  into  the  blood,  and  it  also  hastens  the  coagulation  of  blood  in 
the  case  of  wounds.  Such  sugar-secretion  is  the  form  of  stored 
energy  which  can  be  most  quickly  used  to  replenish  exhausted 
muscles,  and  so  the  muscles  under  emotional  conditions  are  able 
to  work  longer  and  harder  without  arrest  by  fatigue  than  nor- 
mally. Other  reactions  in  these  states,  and  also  in  worry,  are  the 
stopping  of  digestive  movements  and  gastric  secretions,  as  well  as 
the  diversion  of  blood  from  the  abdomen  to  the  heart,  lungs, 
central  nervous  system  and  limbs.  As  Camion  says,  "Every  one 
of  these  visceral  changes  is  directly  serviceable  in  making  the 
organism  more  effective  in  the  violent  display  of  energy  which 
fear  or  rage  or  pain  may  involve."  ^  (On  the  other  hand,  it  is  ob- 
vious that  many  of  the  instinctive  reactions  are  detrimental  to 
effectiveness,  as  the  trembling  and  inhibition  of  movement  in 
fear.)  Similar  reactions  were  observed  in  students  in  athletic  con- 
tests and  previous  to  examinations.  Some  of  these  reactions 
were  even  brought  about  artificially,  by  the  injection  of  adrenalin. 

Such  are  some  of  the  obscure  processes  which  coexist  with 
emotions,  and  make  the  well-known  extra  physical  force  of  the 
latter  intelligible  on  physiological  grounds.  There  are  numerous 
anecdotes  to  the  same  effect,  as  the  boy  who  jumped  a  high  fence 
when  pursued  by  a  bull,  and  the  man  Darwin  tells  about  who 
worked  himself  into  a  passion  preparatory  to  doing  some  extra 
hard  tasks.  Watson  and  Morgan  add  a  more  scientific  instance 
by  demonstrating  that  an  infant  can  hold  itself  suspended  by 
grasping  a  rod  for  a  longer  time  when  it  is  made  angry  than  when 
it  is  at  peace  with  the  world.^ 

1  P.  216. 

^  Op.  cit.,  '  Emotional  Reactions,'  etc.,  p.  170.  An  interesting  suggestion  arising 
from  these  recent  studies  of  emotional  behavior  is  that  the  complexes  of  preparatory 
reactions  thus  aroused  instinctively  by  the  mere  perception  of  the  appropriate  object 
(of  fear,  rage,  love,  etc.)  strongly  suggest  the  inheritance,  at  some  state  in  the  race 
development,  of  acquired  habits  or  "conditioned  reflexes."  The  various  responses 
making  up  the  emotion  are  such  as  would  be  aroused  serially  as  the  situation  de- 
velops, say  in  a  fight;  and  their  arousal  all  at  once  instinctively  by  the  distant  pros- 


136  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

Pain  and  Pleasure  Believed  Minor  Emotions 

So  much  for  the  major  emotions.  Now  what  of  pain  and  pleas- 
ure, pleasantness  and  unpleasantness,  whose  pricks  we  are  nearly 
always  feeling  and  which  apparently  are  driving  us  to  action? 
Can  we  correlate  them  with  bodily  processes  too?  That  question 
is  even  more  controversial  than  the  corresponding  one  concerning 
the  emotions,  but  the  trend  of  expert  opinion  seems  to  be  toward 
the  same  explanation  for  both  classes  of  feeling.  We  cannot  quite 
say  that  emotions  are  algedonic  (affective)  feeHngs  grown  tall, 
because  the  classes  of  emotions  and  feelings  overlap,  —  aU  emo- 
tions are  pleasant  or  unpleasant,  but  not  all  pleasant  or  painful 
feelings  are  emotions.  The  lesser  feelings  which  are  not  called 
emotions,  however,  are  probably  correlated  with  neural  processes 
similar  to  those  imderlying  emotions.  Unpleasant  feeling  and 
emotion,  on  this  theory,  is  the  conscious  correlate  of  complex  in- 
stinctive reactions,  including  such  visceral  and  other  changes  as 
we  have  seen  in  emotion,  which  responses  in  general  are  in  the 
negative  direction  of  avoidance  of  danger  to  the  subject,  of  re- 
action away  from  some  harmful  source  of  stimulation.  Pleasant 
feeling  and  emotion  on  the  other  hand,  attend  the  instinctive 
response-complexes  which  are  usually  in  the  direction  of  beneficial 
stimulation,  at  least  in  the  positive  direction  of  tolerating  or  pro- 
longing the  stimulating  situation. 

Introspectively,  the  lesser  hedonic  feelings  undoubtedly  have 
much  in  common  with  the  emotions.  Annoyance,  dejection,  grief, 
for  instance,  all  involve  similar  uncomfortable  inner  sensations. 
Both  classes  clearly  appear  to  furnish  motive  '  drives  '  toward  or 
away  from  their  objects.  As  we  know,  Cannon  found  substan- 
tially the  same  inner  changes  connected  with  pain  as  with  fear 
and  rage.  Yet  psychologists  have  been  slow  to  group  the  two 
kinds  of  affective  consciousness  together.  The  reason  is  that  the 
instinctive  expressions  of  the  emotions  are  more  vigorous,  and,  to 
outward  appearance,  are  more  uniform  throughout  the  human 

pect  of  such  a  consummation  as  a  fight  is  analogous  to  the  acquired  complex  of 
preparatory  eating-responses  (especially  secretion  of  saliva)  at  the  sight  of  food. 
See  H.  W.  Chase,  "On  the  Inheritance  of  Acquired  Modifications  of  Behavior," 
Am.  Jour.  Psy.,  28:  175-190  (1917). 


EMOTION,  PLEASURE  AND  PAIN  1 37 

race,  than  the  physiological  concomitants  of  minor  pleasantness 
and  unpleasantness.  It  was  long  supposed  that  a  feeling,  like  a 
sensation,  was  the  termination  of  its  stimulation;  and  if  any  action 
came  of  it,  the  act  was  initiated  by  the  will,  after  due  deliberation 
over  its  various  provocations.  Hence  McDougall  tacitly  denies 
that  the  feelings  are  in  any  way  related  to  the  instincts,  for  he  ex- 
plicitly denies  that  they  are  springs  of  action.  He  even  fails  to 
mention  them  among  the  '  universal  tendencies  of  the  mind  ' 
among  which  he  includes  habit-formation,^  though  he  repeatedly 
ascribes  to  them  power  of  prolonging  or  inhibiting  instinctive 
actions  and  thus  of  shaping  habits.^ 

The  imperious  impulse  to  end  a  painful  or  unpleasant  situation, 
and  the  strong  tendency  to  prolong  a  pleasant  one,  are  so  universal 
and  so  obvious  that  philosophy  and  common  sense  have  always 
taken  those  powers  of  pain  and  pleasure  for  granted;  they  did  not 
know  the  physiological  processes  involved,  and  were  content  to 
ascribe  mechanical  eihciency  to  these  states  of  mind  until  Bain 
began  to  wonder  how  it  happens.  We  have  seen  something  of  the 
interminable  controversies  over  hedonism  —  when  is  pleasure  not 
pleasure,  or  higher  and  lower  pleasures,  and  what  not  —  that  re- 
sulted from  the  interactionist  formula.  And  modem  psycholo-- 
gists  who  do  not  believe  in  interaction,  drop  into  interactionist 
assumptions  when  they  talk  of  pleasure  '  stamping  '  a  new  move- 
ment into  a  habit,  and  pain  *  stamping  '  it  out.^ 

The  wide  differences  of  detail,  among  pleasures  and  pains,  are 
an  obstacle  to  any  theory.  The  pleasures  of  a  good  dinner  and  of 
a  good  deed,  or  the  unpleasantness  of  an  aching  tooth  and  of  dis- 
covering we  have  used  the  wrong  fork  at  a  dinner,  to  use  standard 
illustrations,  seem  to  have  little  enough  in  common,  especially 
when  we  learn  from  physiology  that  pains  from  the  teeth,  from 
the  skin  and  from  some  other  tracts  are  definitely  correlated  with 
certain  nerve-endings,  —  they  are  true  sensations.  Those  pains 
are  not  invariably  unpleasant.  But  pleasant  experiences  all  have 
one  character  in  common,  the  general  attitude  of  the  subject.  He 

1  Op.  cit.,  pp.  115-116.  2  E.  g.,  at  p.  43. 

2  See  Watson's  collection  of  such  instances  from  Thorndike,  Judd,  Angell,  Ladd 
and  other  authorities  in  his  Behavior. 


138  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

will  want  to  prolong  them,  or  will  not  be  inclined  to  avoid  them. 
Unpleasant  experiences  he  will  end  as  quickly  as  he  can.  These 
are  the  common  characters  which  really  exhaust  the  meanings  of 
the  words.^  These  attitudes  moreover,  are  as  innate  as  the  quali- 
ties of  sensation.  We  do  not  learn  to  shrink  from  pain,  though  we 
learn  which  things  are  painful  and  thus  are  to  be  shrunk  from. 

Physiological  Correlates  of  Pain  and  Pleasure 

Looking  beyond  these  gross  behavior  characteristics,  psy- 
chologists and  physiologists  have  been  giving  much  attention  in 
recent  years  to  the  question  of  the  physiological  correlates  of  pain 
and  pleasure,  with  the  result  that  there  is  a  large  and  contradic- 
tory literature.^ 

The  theories  are  of  two  general  types.  The  first  assumes  that 
affection  or  feeling  is  a  diffuse  kind  of  sensation,  correlated  with 
special  rudimentary  sense-organs  which  have  not  as  yet  been  dis- 
covered. The  other  holds  that  it  is  a  matter  of  the  internal  econ- 
omy of  all  the  neurons  involved  in  the  response  which  is  felt,  as 
a  whole,  to  be  pleasant  or  unpleasant.  The  second  type  thus  dis- 
penses with  the  undiscovered  sense-organs,  and  it  has  some  ad- 
vantage in  cases  where  the  same  experience  is  at  times  pleasant, 
at  other  times  unpleasant.  Experiments  show  that  numerous 
sensations,  odors  for  example,  pass  from  pleasantness  to  un- 
pleasantness as  their  intensity  is  increased,  and  tasks  which  are 
agreeable  at  the  beginning  are  often  disagreeable  at  the  end. 

^  James  Mill  gave  about  the  above  account  of  pain  and  pleasure,  but  his  state- 
ment "A  man  knows  (the  difference)  by  feeling  it;  and  this  is  the  whole  account  of 
the  phenomenon"  (Ch.  XVII)  is  not  quite  accurate.  The  difference  in  attitude  is 
evident  in  the  man's  behavior,  quite  apart  from  appeal  to  his  consciousness.  Thorn- 
dike's  first  approximation  of  "satisfying"  and  "annoying"  is  also  in  terms  of  this 
duality  of  attitude  and  he  points  out  the  necessity  of  resorting  to  minute  physio- 
logical analysis  because  "successful  operation,"  or  other  gross  behavior  explana- 
tions always  return  in  a  circle  to  satisfyingness  or  annoyingness  itself  (Original 
Nature,  etc.,  p.  123).  Cf.  Titchener,  Textbook,  Sec.  72;  Holmes,  "Pleasure,  Pain 
and  the  Beginnings  of  Intelligence,"  Jour.  Comp.  Neurol,  and  Psy.,  20: 145-164 
(1910),  and  Stout,  op.  cit.,  p.  327. 

2  The  literature  up  to  1908  is  summarized  by  Max  Meyer  in  "The  Nervous 
Correlate  of  Pleasantness  and  Unpleasantness,"  Psy.  Rev.,  1908,  pp.  201  ff.,  392  ff. 
More  recent  discussions  are  in  Herrick,  Neurology,  Ch.  XVIII,  and  in  other  refer- 
ences mentioned  below. 


EMOTION,  PLEASURE  AND  PAIN  I39 

Spencer  regarded  pleasure  as  the  "concomitant  of  heightened 
nervous  discharge,"  and  pain  the  concomitant  of  lessened  dis- 
charge; in  which  theory  he  was  followed  by  Bain  and  Baldwin.^ 
H.  R.  Marshall  in  1893,  connected  the  two  states  with  surplus  or 
deficit  of  nutrition  in  the  neurons,  making  fatigue  the  decisive 
factor.^  Max  Meyer  and  Warner  Fite  ^  consider  that  it  is  a  ques- 
tion of  reinforcement  or  inhibition  of  neural  currents  by  responses 
innervated  at  approximately  the  same  time.  Thorndike's  theory 
hinges,  like  Marshall's,  on  the  nutrition  or  other  internal  condi- 
tions of  the  neurons.^ 

Theories  of  this  type  all  have  their  special  merits  and  special 
difficulties,  though  doubtless  fatigue  is  an  important  factor  in 
many  states  of  unpleasantness.  The  discovery  of  independent 
pain-sense-organs,  moreover,  has  given  encouragement  to  the 
type  which  considers  affection  as  a  quasi-sensation,  —  this  type 
of  theory  also  being  congenial  to  the  doctrine  of  sensationaHsm 
(that  all  consciousness  is  derived  ultimately  from  sensations). 
Stumpf  was  an  early  champion  of  it,  and  Titchener  and  Watson 
are  among  many  contemporary  exponents.^  Knight  Dunlap  has 
recently  suggested  that  the  James-Lange  theory  should  be  ex- 
tended to  include  feeling,  as  Dunlap  believes  feeling  is  correlated 
with  obscure  bodily  changes,  including  stimulation  of  nerve  end- 
ings in  the  muscles  of  the  blood  vessels,  alimentary  canal,  ducts  of 
larger  glands,  etc.®  He  points  out  that  some  sensations,  as  those  of 
hunger,  are  undoubtedly  from  inner  stimulation  and  are  not  re- 
ferred to  any  particular  place;  which  fact  gives  the  hint  that  the 
difference  between  sensation  and  feeling  is  only  a  matter  of  spatial 
localization.  The  unpleasantness  of  fatigue,  we  may  add,  is  per- 
haps due  to  stimulation  of  special  sense-organs  by  the  toxins  of 
fatigue.  In  connection  with  any  theory  of  the  sensational  type, 
we  must  remember  that  the  impulse  from  the  sense-organ  has  to 
get  out  and  produce  response. 

^  Holmes,  op.  cit.,  pp.  152-154. 
"^  His  book  is  entitled  Pain,  Pleasure  and  Esthetics. 

^  W.  Fite,  "The  Place  of  Pleasure  and  Pain  in  the  Functional  Psychology,"  Psy. 
Rev.,  10:  633-644  (1903).  ■*  Op.  cit.,  Ch.  IX.    Cf.  pp.  227,  228. 

^  Titchener,  Textbook,  Sec.  74;  Watson,  op.  cit.,  Ch.  I. 
^  "Thought-Content  and  Feeling,"  Psy.  Rev.,  23:49-70  (1916). 


140  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

How  does  it  happen  that  these  inner  stimuli  of  pleasantness  are 
given  just  in  connection  with  an  outwardly  pleasant  situation, 
and  that  only  the  unpleasant  inner  stimuU  are  given  by  the 
muscles  and  glands  when  the  outer  conditions  are  annoying? 

Whether  the  immediate  neural  correlate  of  feeling  is  a  special 
reflex  or  a  condition  of  the  neurons  of  the  general  response,  it 
seems  clear  that  the  correlate  is  part  of  the  preorganized  instinc- 
tive response  pattern  adjusted  to  the  outer  situation.  This  con- 
clusion is  inevitable  from  the  universal  connection  between 
pleasantness  and  seeking  responses,  etc.  If  we  follow  the  James- 
Lange  lead  tentatively,  we  shall  go  farther  and  say  that  in  all 
groups  of  responses  to  '  annoying  '  stimuli  there  is  a  common 
group  of  inner  reactions  whose  unlocalized  consciousness  has  the 
quality  of  unpleasantness.  The  response  by  original  nature  to  the 
aimoying  object  '  a  hot  iron,'  for  instance,  is  partly  the  jerking 
away  of  that  part  of  the  body  which  has  touched  it;  this  reflex  is 
protective  and  instinctive,  but  it  is  not  all  of  the  response.  There 
are  the  concomitant  inner  reflexes  of  the  blood  vessels,  glands, 
etc.  Cannon  has  demonstrated  some  of  these  inner  reactions  in 
pain  —  we  should  never  have  suspected  their  existence  from  mere 
introspective  evidence  —  and  undoubtedly  there  are  many  more 
yet  to  be  found.  With  experience,  the  original  responses  are  ex- 
tended by  habits,  and  then  our  outwardly  observable  movements 
in  the  painful  situation  are  different  from  the  original  response, 
but  the  instinctive  inner  complex  of  sensations  that  is  character- 
istic of  pain,  remains. 

When  the  situation  is  called  not  painful  but  merely  unpleasant, 
as  in  embarrassment,  the  outer  part  of  the  instinctive  response  is 
the  facial  expression  of  annoyance  and  probably  the  movements 
and  posture  we  call  cringing  or  shrinking;  but  these  are  soon  over- 
laid by  habits.  The  inner  reactions,  however,  remain  similar  in 
all  people  at  all  times;  there  are  vasomotor  changes  (blushing  or 
paleness),  variation  in  the  heart  action,  responses  in  the  throat 
and  stomach  which  give  sensations  of  dryness,  heaviness,  etc., 
and  many  others,  known  and  unknown.  Wundt  was  one  of 
the  first  psychologists  to  investigate,  by  registering  instruments, 
the  changes  in  pulse,  respiration,  temperature  and  so  on  which 


EMOTION,  PLEASURE  AND  PAIN  14I 

accompany  the  affective  consciousness.  If  the  situation  is  of  a  cer- 
tain crucial  kind,  the  responses  become  so  vigorous  and  complex 
that  collectively  they  are  called  an  emotion.  The  pleasant  emo- 
tions, like  other  feelings,  are  usually  correlated  with  outward 
responses  welcoming  or  seeking  beneficial  objects,  as  in  love;  and 
the  unpleasant  emotions,  like  fear  and  rage,  are  connected  with 
movements  to  avoid  or  repel  harmful  objects.  All  contain  a  host 
of  inner  reactions,  as  we  have  seen,  and  we  must  assimie  that 
there  is  enough  overlapping  of  these  —  and  perhaps  also  among 
the  outwardly  observable  reactions  —  to  give  to  one  class  its 
common  character  of  pleasantness,  and  to  the  other  its  earmark 
of  unpleasantness. 

Two  objections  may  occur  to  the  reader,  which  may  be  cleared 
up.  It  may  be  said  that  all  pleasant  objects  are  not  beneficial 
(and  that  further,  some  repelling  reactions  are  pleasant,  as  some- 
times in  pugnacity).  But  the  theory  correlates  the  feeHng  with 
the  seeking  or  avoiding  response  rather  than  with  the  ultimate 
effect  of  the  object  on  the  subject.  What  we  do  strive  for  is  pleas- 
ant to  us,  be  it  saving  grace  or  moonshine  whiskey,  and  in  a  rough 
way,  by  natural  selection,  the  surviving  species  have  come  to  like 
and  seek  what  is  good  for  them.  And  the  ferocity  which  is  pleas- 
ant is  that  of  the  hunt ;  real  rage  such  as  comes  from  obstruction 
is  unpleasant  enough.  It  may  further  be  objected  that  not  all 
reactions  are  pleasant  or  unpleasant;  some  are  indifferent.  That 
is  quite  possible,  according  to  the  theory,  for  unless  a  reflex  is 
connected  (either  instinctively  or  by  habit  —  '  association  ')  with 
an  innate  group  of  the  f  eeHng-reactions  and  so  arouses  them  when 
it  is  aroused,  it  will  be  indifferent  as  to  affective  tone.  Whether  or 
not  there  are  any  such  isolated  responses  may  be  determined  in 
the  future,  without  making  any  difference  to  the  theory. 

There  are  many  other  disputed  points  which  must  be  left  to  the 
experts.  Since  the  most  crucial  part  of  the  problem  of  feeling  is 
the  question  of  neural  correlates,  we  quote  the  bulk  of  the  sum- 
mary of  a  recent  discussion  of  pain  and  pleasure  by  the  neurologist 
Herrick,  which  leans  strongly  in  the  James-Lange  direction :  ^ 

*  The  trend  is  so  marked  throughout  modem  physiological  and  behavior  psy- 
chological literature,  that  the  present  writer  had  reached  these  views  before  he  read 
Herrick. 


142  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

In  the  human  organism  pain  appears  to  be  a  true  sensation  with  its  own 
receptors,  probably  with  independent  peripheral  neurons  (in  some  cases  at 
least),  and  certainly  with  well-localized  conduction  paths  and  cerebral  cen- 
ters, these  centers  being  thalamic  and  not  cortical.  Pain  appears  to  be  closely 
related  neurologically  with  feelings  of  unpleasantness  and  pleasantness,  and 
these,  in  turn,  with  the  higher  emotions  and  the  affective  life  in  general.  .  .  . 
Pleasantness  and  unpleasantness  are  not  regarded  simply  as  attributes  of 
specific  sensory  processes  in  any  case,  but  rather  as  a  mode  of  reaction  or  phys- 
iological attitude  of  the  whole  nervous  system  intimately  bound  up  with 
certain  visceral  reactions  of  a  protective  sort  whose  central  control  is  effected 
in  the  ventral  and  medial  parts  of  the  thalamus.  .  .  .  This  mechanism  is 
phylogeneticaUy  very  old,  and  in  lower  vertebrates  which  lack  the  cerebral 
cortex  it  is  adequate  to  direct  avoiding  reactions  to  noxious  stimuli  and  seek- 
ing reactions  to  beneficial  stimuli.  With  the  appearance  of  the  cortex  in 
vertebrate  evolution  these  thalamic  centers  became  intimately  connected 
with  the  association  centers  of  the  cerebral  hemispheres,  and  an  intelligent 
analysis  of  the  feehngs  of  unpleasantness  and  pleasantness  became  possible. 
...  In  the  normal  man  these  mechanisms  may  function  with  a  minimum  of 
cortical  control,  giving  the  general  feeling  tone  of  well-being  or  malaise,  or 
they  may  be  tied  up  with  the  most  complex  cortical  processes,  thus  entering 
into  the  fabric  of  the  higher  sentiments  and  affections  and  becoming  impor- 
tant factors  in  shaping  human  conduct. ^ 

The  statement  that  pleasure  and  pain  and  emotion  are  always 
the  results  of  reactions  is  an  affront  to  common  sense,  which  un- 
hesitatingly declares,  with  the  association  psychologists,  that 
*  the  idea  of  pleasure  '  is  what  prompts  us  to  action.  The  latter 
statement,  like  others  involving  interaction  between  the  mental 
and  the  material,  is  true  enough  for  a  good  many  purposes;  but  if 
we  have  the  physiological  series  complete  in  our  minds,  we  shall 
come  to  know  more  accurately  under  what  conditions,  what  ideas 
of  pleasure,  lead  to  what  actions;  and  hence  provide  for  better 
control  of  human  behavior.  Our  reconciliation  of  the  two  points 
of  view,  then,  is  as  follows :  We  take  pleasure  in  things  originally 
because  instinctively  we  seek  them;  but  once  we  have  experienced 
the  pleasure,  its  recollection  does  undoubtedly  induce  us  to  re- 
peat the  action.  But  now  we  are  slipping  a  psychical  link  into  the 
chain,  —  how  can  the  ''recollection  of  pleasure"  (substantially 
the  same  thing  as  the  "idea  of  pleasure")  act  on  our  nerves  and 
muscles?  This  question  makes  necessary  an  examination  of  the 
fimdamentals  of  the  learning  process,  for  the  influence  of  ex- 

'  C.  J.  Herrick,  Introduction  to  Neurology,  2d  ed.  (1915,  1918),  pp.  289-290. 


EMOTION,  PLEASURE  AND  PAIN  143 

perience  just  described  is  the  result  of  acquired  mechanisms,  not 
wholly  of  innate  reflexes.  How  the  mechanisms  of  pleasantness 
and  unpleasantness  cooperate  in  setting  up  new  mechanisms  of 
habit  (and  therefore  of  motives),  is  a  problem  full  of  interest  to 
us.  Unfortunately  there  is  small  agreement  on  it  among  psy- 
chologists, but  the  foregoing  conception  of  feeling  enables  us  to  fit 
the  facts  of  consciousness  into  the  facts  of  behavior  and  physi- 
ology with  considerable  success. 


CHAPTER  XI 

THE  LEARNING  PROCESS 

We  have  now  taken  stock  in  a  general  way  of  the  original  nature 
of  man,  so  far  as  concerns  his  motives  to  action;  and  we  have 
found  that  the  appetites,  instincts,  emotions,  pleasures  and  pains 
are  all  based  on  an  inherited  behavior-equipment,  which  consists 
of  the  sense-organs,  muscles,  glands,  with  reflex  neural  circuits 
connecting  them  into  instinctive  responses.  To  this  conclusion 
we  are  led,  whether  we  consider  the  emotional  and  affective  con- 
sciousnesses as  complexes  of  sensations  —  each  sensation  being 
correlated  with  a  certain  partial  response  —  or  as  unique  entities 
linked  with  the  organism's  gross  behavior.  We  must  now  con- 
sider the  means  by  which  new  behavior-mechanisms  are  acquired 
to  supplement  the  innate,  and  thereby  to  perfect  the  living  crea- 
ture's adjustment  to  his  own  special  surroundings.  In  brief,  we 
shall  examine  the  learning  process. 

Elements  of  the  Problem 

Some  bafHing  psychological  questions  are  soon  encountered. 
The  tutoring  influence  of  pleasant  and  painful  experiences,  for 
example,  are  evident  to  anyone's  general  observation,  but  the 
difficulty  of  accounting  for  the  matter  in  terms  of  new  neural 
pathways  is  so  great  that  few  psychologists  yet  agree  as  to  what 
part  pleasure  and  pain  do  play  in  learning.  A  somewhat  com- 
parable problem  is  presented  by  '  association  of  ideas  '  —  how  do 
ideas  take  effect  on  flesh  and  bone?  Then  if  we  remember  the 
emphasis  laid  on  habit  by  the  '  functional  psychologists,'  we 
wonder  if  habitual  mechanisms  can  be  prime  movers  to  action, 
or  if  McDougall  is  right  in  tracing  all  their  drive  to  the  instincts. 
We  do  seem  to  have  many  habits  like  dressing  or  buying  or  vot- 
ing in  certain  ways,  to  which  we  are  slaves  long  after  the  original 
interests  which  established  them  have  passed  away.    And  if  a 

144 


THE  LEARNING  PROCESS  145 

habit  may  be  a  prime  mover,  what  are  the  b'mits  within  which 
such  artificial  motives  can  be  acquired?  How  do  some  lines  of 
action  become  so  fixed  upon  us  as  to  be  matters  of  principle  or 
conscience?  Presently  we  reach  the  puzzle  of  voluntary  and 
rational  action,  which  is  apparently  a  matter  neither  of  instinct 
nor  of  habit.  Voluntary  behavior  evidently  is  influenced  greatly 
by  pleasure  and  pain,  but  by  pleasures  and  pains  which  are  in  the 
future,  and  which  may  never  have  been  experienced  by  the  agent 
or  anyone  else,  —  only  inferred  rationally.   How  can  this  be? 

Difficult  as  are  these  problems,  we  shall  find  that  they  can  be 
connected  up  with  the  innate  motive-elements  which  we  have 
been  considering,  and  the  whole  system  made  fairly  intelligible, 
if  we  have  recourse  again  to  their  hidden  common  denominator, 
the  nervous  system. 

Habit  and  Association  of  Ideas  —  Two  Sides  of 
THE  Same  Process 

Let  us  begin  with  habit  and  association  of  ideas.  The  phe- 
nomena of  these  two  entities  of  different  planes  are  strikingly 
similar.  A  habit,  which  is  a  matter  of  performing  a  certain  chain 
of  acts  in  serial  fashion,  is  acquired  and  gradually  perfected  by 
frequent  repetition  of  the  acts  in  the  same  order;  an  association  of 
ideas  such  as  the  learning  of  a  poem,  is  acquired  and  strengthened 
in  just  the  same  way.  In  both  cases  it  is  necessary  that  the  ele- 
mentary acts  or  ideas  be  experienced  closely  together  in  time. 
Contiguity,  therefore,  is  a  principle  governing  each  process,  as  well 
a.s  frequency.  Sometimes  when  there  is  sufficient  affective  feeling 
involved,  contiguity  alone  will  firmly  establish  either  a  habit  or  an 
association,  —  a  burned  child  dreads  the  fire.  Both  in  habit  and 
in  association  too,  recency  is  an  important  principle;  they  both 
decay  with  disuse.  Again,  association  by  similarity  is  paralleled 
by  the  performance  of  habits  at  the  wrong  cue,  as  when  a  man 
pulls  out  his  latchkey  on  his  friend's  doorstep. 

There  is  even  another  suggestive  resemblance.  In  most  habits, 
as  James  remarked,  the  execution  of  one  of  the  constituent  re- 
flexes serves  as  stimulus  to  the  next  one,  and  so  on  to  the  end  of 
the  series.   Outer  stimuli,  of  course,  are  likely  to  give  some  of  the 


146  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

cues,  but  in  walking,  playing  the  piano,  or  performing  any  athletic 
game  skillfully,  the  '  feel '  of  it,  or  the  kinesthetic  sensations,  are 
most  important.  The  existence  of  kinesthetic  sense-organs  in 
the  muscles  has  been  verified  by  anatomical  research,  and  their 
importance  both  in  the  learning  process  and  in  one's  general  con- 
sciousness is  very  great.  Watson  demonstrated,  for  example,  that 
rats  form  the  habit  of  treading  the  Hampton  Court  maze  in  the 
most  direct  manner  possible  in  order  to  get  food,  chiefly  under 
guidance  of  the  kinesthetic  sense.  If  an  alley  is  suddenly  short- 
ened, the  rat  will  bump  into  the  wall;  and  if  he  is  blinded  he  will 
learn  the  maze  almost  as  readily  as  when  he  has  the  advantage  of 
sight.^  This  playing-out  of  a  chain  of  responses,  all  within  the 
animal,  so  to  speak,  is  comparable  to  the  process  of  associative 
recall,  when  idea  follows  idea  without  reference  to  outer  stimuli. 

Observe  now  that  all  these  correspondences  between  habit  and 
association  of  ideas  are  just  what  would  be  expected  upon  the 
hypothesis  developed  above,  that  the  image  is  simply  the  revival 
of  the  original  response  at  a  low  tension.  It  has  long  seemed  prob- 
able to  psychologists  —  for  instance  to  Bain  and  James  —  that 
the  same  '  tracks '  in  the  brain  are  active  in  recall  as  in  original 
sensation,  and  the  more  recent  doctrine,  that  the  whole  reflex 
circuit  is  in  some  degree  active  when  an  image  is  experienced,  is 
only  a  sHght  modification  of  the  older  view. 

There  is  one  divergence  between  habit  and  association  which 
when  fully  considered,  bridges  the  gap  between  the  association 
psychology  and  the  modern  '  functional '  systems.  Association  of 
ideas  ex  hypothesi  is  always  conscious;  while  the  acting-out  of  a 
habit  is  frequently  unconscious.  But  the  introspectionists  have 
always  been  puzzled  by  intermediate  ideas  dropping  out  of  con- 
sciousness in  associative  recalls,  and  by  the  phenomena  of  *  un- 
conscious judgments.'  As  we  have  seen.  Hartley  and  the  Mills 
emphasized  strongly  this  disappearance  of  '  unimportant '  linking 
ideas,  because  it  obscures  the  associative  origin  of  many  beliefs 
and  desires.  Then  we  must  remember  that  any  habitual  action 
may  be  performed  consciously  if  the  subject '  gives  his  attention 
to  it,'  and  so  far  as  physiologists  know,  without  any  different 

1  Behavior,  Ch.  VI. 


THE  LEARNING  PROCESS  I47 

mechanism  of  response  being  used.  According  to  Professor  Holt, 
giving  one's  attention  to  it  simply  means  that  this  response 
for  the  moment  stands  at  the  apex  of  all  the  body's  activities. 
Though  ideas  can  never  be  unconscious,  therefore,  there  are  fre- 
quently unconscious  links  associating  them,  and  these  links  seem 
to  correspond  to  habit-mechanisms  which  are  subordinated  to 
the  focal  activity  that  appears  in  consciousness. 

The  upshot  of  it  is  that  laws  of  habit-formation  are  laws  of 
association,  and  are,  in  fact,  laws  of  learning.  The  correspond- 
ences we  have  cited  establish  that  point  without  regard  to  any 
particular  theory  of  consciousness.  We  may  ftnd  even  that  the 
laws  of  habit  are  also  the  laws  of  reasoning.  This  relationship 
explains  why  a  group  of  intelligent  men  are  spending  so  much 
time  nowadays  upon  ingenious  puzzle-boxes  for  cats,  mice, 
monkeys,  guinea-pigs  and  many  other  lower  creatures.  The 
principles  learned  in  those  simplified  cases  enable  us  to  under- 
stand the  fundamental  facts  of  human  learning,  and  the  human 
complications  can  then  be  handled  with  less  bewilderment. 

Principles  of  Habit-Formation  or  Learning 

We  shall  attempt  now  to  summarize  more  exactly  the  condi- 
tions of  habit-formation  or  learning,  for  the  sake  of  their  bearing 
on  the  problem  of  rationality. 

Contiguity  or  Conditioned  Reflex 

The  most  fundamental  principle  we  may  call  simultaneity  or 
contiguity.  A  connection  of  more  or  less  faciHty  may  be  estab- 
lished between  any  two  reflex  circuits  which  are  active  at  the 
same  time,  or  closely  following  one  another,  so  that  on  the  next 
occasion  when  one  is  aroused,  the  impulse  will  spread  to  the  other 
and  arouse  it  too.  This  fact  is  fundamental  to  the  '  conditioned 
reflex,'  which  is  in  turn,  at  the  bottom  of  habit-formation.  We 
must  not  think  that  the  neural  paths  of  the  instinctive  reactions 
are  isolated  like  a  number  of  insulated  wires,  for  the  neurons  in 
the  central  nervous  system  possess  wandering  branches  and  are 
so  situated  that  the  physiologists  consider  that  "every  part  of  the 
nervous  system  is  in  nervous  connection  with  every  other  part, 


148  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

directly  or  indirectly."  ^  These  intertwinings,  which  make  a 
variety  of  connections  possible,  are  especially  numerous  in  the 
cerebral  cortex;  hence  the  importance  of  the  latter's  size  as  an 
index  of  intelligence.  The  connections  which  exist  among  them 
all  at  any  one  time,  however,  offer  greatly  varying  degrees  of 
resistance  to  nerve-impulses,  and  the  resistance  between  the  cen- 
tral elements  of  two  previously-estabKshed  reflexes  is  somehow 
lowered  and  worn  down  when  the  two  are  active  at  the  same  time.^ 

Some  classical  experimental  work  on  the  conditioned  reflex  was 
done  by  the  Russian  physiologist  Pavlov  (German  spelling  Paw- 
low),  twenty  years  or  more  ago.  He  arranged  methods  of  register- 
ing automatically  the  flow  of  saliva  and  gastric  juice  in  the  dogs 
upon  which  his  experiments  were  conducted,  and  then  gave  the 
dogs  food  simultaneously  with  various  other  stimuli.  The  latter 
were  lights  of  different  shades  of  color,  tones  of  different  pitches, 
etc.  Before  its  association  with  food,  the  light  or  color  of  course 
would  bring  no  salivary  reflex,  but  when  the  dog  had  experienced 
the  light  and  food  together  a  few  times,  then  the  light  by  itself 
would  start  the  flow  of  saliva.  Upon  such  a  secondary  or  con- 
ditioned reflex,  further  conditioned  reflexes  could  be  built.  If  the 
light  previously  associated  with  food  and  a  certain  sound-tone 
were  given  a  few  times  together,  with  no  food  at  all,  then  the 
tone  by  itself  would  bring  the  sahvary  reflexes.^ 

Mankind  has  always  been  familiar,  of  course,  with  the  '  mouth- 
watering '  phenomenon  in  connection  with  the  sight  or  thought  of 
food;  and  a  multitude  of  other  associative  responses  have  for 
ages  been  commented  on  before  these  exact,  quantitative  obser- 
vations were  thought  of.  We  all  acquire  responses  to  whistles, 
bells,  pictures,  colors,  names,  flags,  scenes,  simply  by  virtue  of 

^  Herrick,  op.  cii.,  p.  69.   Sherrington  has  made  a  similar  statement. 

2  It  is  not  a  matter  of  absolute  simultaneity,  since  any  reflex  is  active  for  a  period 
of  some  seconds.   Contiguity  is  therefore  the  better  word. 

*  Summary  and  references  in  Watson,  Behavior,  Ch.  III.  Watson  has  super- 
intended some  similar  work,  partly  on  human  subjects,  in  this  country,  using 
reflexes  such  as  the  foot- jerk  to  build  on.  See  his  report  in  "The  Place  of  the  Con- 
ditioned Reflex  in  Psychology,"  Psy.  Rev.,  23:  89-116  (1916).  The  work  in  animal 
behavior  by  Thorndike,  Yerkes  and  others  has  been  to  the  same  effect  except  that 
habits  rather  than  single  reflexes  were  studied.  As  Watson  says,  all  habits  are  made 
up  of  conditioned  reflexes. 


THE  LEARNING  PROCESS  149 

their  having  been  presented  in  temporal  contiguity  with  some 
stimulus  which  was  at  the  time  intrinsically  interesting  to  us. 
The  grandest  example  of  all,  as  James  Mill  knew,  is  language. 
The  spoken  words  are  all  just  so  many  conditioned  reflexes,  ac- 
quired first  through  simultaneous  pointing  or  other  appropriate 
gestures,  and  later  compounded  one  on  another;  written  language 
is  the  same  process  over  again,  building  upon  the  sound  responses. 
Association  by  similarity  is  a  little  different.  It  means  that  one 
aspect  or  element  of  a  former  situation,  being  presented  in  a 
slightly  different  context,  is  responded  to  in  the  same  manner  as 
the  first  whole  situation  was  responded  to,  —  the  differing  ele- 
ments being  ignored  or  not  responded  to  at  all.  The  doorstep 
and  lock  elements  call  forth  the  response  of  reaching  the  key,  in 
the  example  given  by  William  James. 

Frequency 

This  lowered  resistance  at  interconnections  of  two  reflex  cir- 
cuits which  are  simultaneously  operative,  therefore,  is  the  first 
condition  of  learning,  and  the  larger  the  association  area  the 
greater  the  possibiUties  of  new  associations  or  learning.  The  next 
important  principle  is  that  of  frequency;  the  resistance  at  any 
synapse  or  neuron-junction  is  worn  further  away  with  each  pas- 
sage of  impulse  through  it.  The  metaphor  commonly  used  is  a 
road  becoming  worn  smooth  by  travel.  The  physiological  facts  of 
the  synapse  are  still  very  obscure,^  but  there  is  no  question  that 
learning  is  a  matter  of  lessened  resistance  at  these  connecting 
points.  We  must  add  the  ingenious  and  significant  point  of  Wat- 
son that  the  successful  movement,  in  trial  and  error  learning,  is 
the  one  which  by  mathematical  probability  will  most  frequently 
occur,  since  it  always  ends  the  series  and  hence  always  occurs, 
while  any  wrong  movement  will  not  necessarily  occur  in  each 
trial  series.^ 

Persistence  of  Efforts 

We  need  now  to  examine  the  persistence  of  effort,  and  the 
'  trying  out '  of  various  responses,   which  characterizes  most 

*  Herrick,  op.  cit.,  Ch.  Ill;  C.  S.  Sherrington,  The  Integrative  Action  of  the 
Nervous  System  (1906),  Ch.  I.  ^  Op.  cit.,  Ch.  VII. 


I50  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

learning-series  in  their  early  stages.  We  are  constantly  exposed 
to  multitudes  of  stimuli,  but  we  form  habits  with  regard  to  but 
few.  Some  of  the  associations  formed  by  any  animal  are  acci- 
dental, due  to  the  recurring  scenes  and  events  which  happen  in  his 
native  locality,  but  most  of  them  are  connected  with  his  own 
bodily  cycles,  —  his  appetites,  which  goad  him  periodically  into 
activity  until  the  material  is  found  which  chemically  quiets  them. 
One  of  these  appetites  is  hunger,  and  for  its  satisfaction  every 
animal  is  equipped  with  intricate  food-getting  instincts,  which 
usually  become  operative  when  the  food  is  sensed.  Perhaps  all 
instincts  have  a  sort  of  appetite  for  exercise  all  their  own,  when 
their  constituent  nerves  and  muscles  are  well  stocked  with  energy, 
but  most  of  these  constituents  are  used  as  members  of  other  re- 
sponses, and  apparently  the  '  keep  trying  '  behavior  is  not  chiefly 
due  to  the  instincts  themselves.  It  is  rather  due  to  the  continued 
stimulation  of  appetite  from  organs  which  are  in  want  of  relief  by 
nutrition  or  outlet  of  energy.  In  situations  of  fear  and  pugnacity 
there  are  likely  to  be  continued  stimulations  from  the  feared  or 
hated  object.  Such  is  the  case  in  simple  learning  by  the  lower 
animals  or  by  the  human  infant. 

But  in  higher  learning,  when  the  agent  possesses  a  number  of 
complex  responses,  each  composed  of  several  innate  affective 
elements  and  various  acquired  habits,  the  mechanism  of  persist- 
ence on  the  '  problem  '  is  much  more  difiicult  of  analysis.  A  large 
response  like  this  requires  some  time  for  its  execution,  by  nervous 
impulses  spreading  from  the  first  reflexes  to  the  later  ones,  and  it 
is  toward  the  innervations  given  by  the  first  reflexes,  apparently, 
that  we  must  look  for  much  of  the  drive  toward  trying,  during  the 
selection  of  later  ones.  We  shall  return  to  this  matter  later,  for  we 
believe  that  to  use  the  same  theory  in  explaining  such  different 
drives  as  the  '  trying '  of  the  cat  to  get  food,  the  student  to  solve 
a  mathematical  problem,  and  the  artist  to  paint  pictures,  as 
Woodworth  ^  and  many  other  students  do,  is  to  beg  one  of  the 
main  problems  of  the  learning  process. 

1  Op.  cit.,  pp.  i2off. 


THE  LEARNING  PROCESS  151 

Multiple  Reactions  to  Same  (General)  Situation 

Assuming  that  our  organism  will  keep  up  some  kind  of  activity 
until  he  gets  food  or  some  other  means  of  stopping  his  stimula- 
tions, the  next  question  is  what  determines  the  kind  of  attempts 
he  will  make.  We  can  find  in  the  writings  of  Thorndike,  Yerkes, 
Watson  and  many  other  comparative  psychologists,  records  of 
the  actual  movements  made  by  cats,  mice,  birds,  fish,  what  not, 
in  various  kinds  of  puzzle-boxes  which  had  to  be  solved  for  the 
creatures  to  get  food  or  to  avoid  punishment.  These  experiments 
are  repeated  until  the  animal  learns  the  trick,  and  a  curve  is  made 
to  show  his  rate  of  progress.  Somewhat  similar  records  exist  for 
the  much  simpler  trials  of  certain  single-celled  creatures,  in  the 
writings  of  Jennings  and  a  few  others.^ 

The  animal  is  stimulated  to  continual  activity  by  his  hunger 
and  the  sight  and  smell  of  food  which  is  beyond  the  bars  of  his 
box.  The  box  can  be  opened  by  turning  a  lever,  pulling  a  string, 
digging  through  sawdust  to  a  hole  in  the  floor,  etc.  If  the  animal 
is  in  a  maze,  the  problem  is  to  avoid  the  bHnd  alleys.  The  crea- 
tures respond  to  the  unfamiliar  situation  by  giving  their  instinc- 
tive and  acquired  reactions,  first  to  one  feature  or  partial  stimulus, 
and  then  to  another,  often  coming  back  to  the  same  unsuccessful 
attempt.  The  cat  or  rat  will  explore  the  sides  of  the  cage,  claw- 
ing, biting,  beating  the  bars.  The  rat  will  instinctively  burrow 
through  the  sawdust  in  a  random  direction,  and  in  the  maze  he 
will  often  explore  every  inch  of  the  floor  space  in  the  first  few 
trials. 

After  a  number  of  failures,  the  right  combination  of  responses  is 
finally  hit  upon,  and  the  food  is  obtained.  On  successive  oc- 
casions, as  the  animal  is  confronted  with  the  same  problem,  he 
avoids  more  and  more  of  the  unsuccessful  acts,  and  the  time  in 
which  he  can  cope  with  this  particular  situation  whenever  he 
meets  it  is  greatly  reduced.  The  rat  will  take  seven  to  eighteen 
minutes  to  solve  a  simple  puzzle-box  on  the  first  trial,  but  on  the 
second  trial  the  time  is  reduced  to  two  to  seven  minutes,  and  on 

^  See  Watson,  Behavior,  Ch.  VI,  for  a  summary  of  many  of  these  results,  and 
much  illuminating  comment  on  the  theory  involved. 


152  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

the  third  to  less  than  a  minute.  The  same  animal  in  the  miniature 
maze  requires  thirty  minutes  for  the  first  solution,  while  after  a 
few  trials  he  makes  the  trip  in  half  a  minute,  ignoring  all  the  false 
turns.^ 

These  lower  animals,  like  ourselves,  in  many  cases  never  learn 
to  eliminate  all  the  unnecessary  acts,  for  a  useless  link  is  strength- 
ened by  frequency  just  as  much  as  a  useful  one.  The  fact  that  the 
necessary  acts  always  have  to  be  performed  before  the  appetite  is 
stilled,  whereas  the  unnecessary  do  not,  gives  to  the  former  a 
general  preponderating  frequency.  We  find  in  substantially  all 
organisms,  then,  a  multiplicity  of  reaction  possibilities  to  the  same 
(large)  situation  to  which  as  a  whole,  no  instinctive  response  is 
adequate.  If  any  combination  of  its  ready-made  reactions  can 
succeed  in  appeasing  the  appetite,  then  the  creature  may  learn 
through  trial  and  error  to  make  that  successful  response  when- 
ever the  situation  is  presented  to  him. 

To  consider  these  multiple  reaction  possibilities  as  different 
responses  to  a  single  stimulus,  however,  would  be  the  mark  of  a 
primitive  psychology.  We  must  believe  that  every  stimulation- 
current  passes  through  predetermined  channels  to  produce  def- 
inite muscular  or  glandular  tensions,  which  channels  (synapses  of 
least  resistance)  are  fixed  by  heredity  or  by  previous  learning. 
As  Thorndike  says,  the  vague  theories  of  general  nervous  over- 
flow are  no-wise  in  line  with  the  other  facts  of  psychology.  The 
multiplicity  of  reactions  to  the  same  general  situation,  then,  de- 
pends on  two  sets  of  factors, — the  differing  physiological  states  of 
the  organism,  and  the  number  of  separate  stimuli  which  the  ex- 
ternal situation  as  a  whole  contains.  We  may  find  varying  re- 
sponses to  an  identical  particular  stimulus,  as  Jennings  did  with 
protozoa,  due  presumably  to  varying  degrees  of  fatigue  in  the 
response  mechanisms.  After  the  instinctive  response  which  is 
determined  by  the  most  open  neural  path  has  been  given,  if  the 
same  stimulus  is  repeated,  the  resistance  at  the  synapses  in  this 
circuit  is  increased,  so  that  the  impulse  breaks  into  a  path  which 
was  less  open  than  the  first  when  the  first  was  fresh.^ 

1  Watson,  Behavior,  pp.  191,  211. 

^  This  is  an  oversimplified  version;  the  facts  of  fatigue  and  adaptation  in  the 
nervous  system  and  sense-organs  are  quite  obscure.  But  depletion  of  stored  energy 


THE  LEARNING  PROCESS  153 

But  we  are  more  likely  to  iind  the  case  of  responses  to  different 
stimuli  in  the  same  general  situation,  at  least  to  different  com- 
binations of  stimuli.  As  the  cat  in  the  cage  tries  out  and  fatigues 
one  response  after  another,  the  stimuli  from  new  aspects  of  the 
situation  —  different  bars,  the  lever,  different  spaces  between  the 
bars  —  successively  gain  admission  to  her  senses  and  are  given 
attention  or  responded  to.  In  figurative  language  we  say  that  the 
animal  *  tries  its  repertoire  '  of  tricks,  but  this  statement,  unless 

undoubtedly  does  alter  the  balance  of  power  among  the  responses.  Joseph  Peterson 
suggests  as  a  principle  of  learning  that,  in  a  baffling  situation,  several  contradictory 
responses  are  stimulated  at  once,  so  that  when  the  first  one  tried  fails  to  achieve 
success  the  others  are  completed  without  opposition  ("Completeness  of  Response  as 
an  Explanation  Principle  in  Learning,"  in  Psy.  Rev.,  23:  153-162  (1916)). 

There  are  several  groups  of  phenomena  commonly  described  as  adaptation 
which  have  distinct  physiological  characteristics.  Many  of  them  are  clear  cases  of 
habits,  with  the  peculiarity  that  the  native  response  becomes  dissociated  from  its 
original  stimulus,  as  when  an  animal  leams  not  to  be  frightened  at  a  given  object  as 
the  latter  becomes  *  familiar.' 

A  variant  of  this  case  is  referred  to  when  we  say  we  have  come  '  not  to  notice  '  the 
clock  ticking  in  our  room  or  the  cars  going  by  our  doors.  Probably  we  continue  to 
respond  to  these  stimuli,  but  the  responses  have  worn  to  unconsciousness,  as  is  the 
case  with  many  habits;  though  it  is  possible  that  inhibiting  responses  have  been 
developed  which  normally  prevent  stimulation  by  these  recurrent  disturbances. 

The  adaptation  of  sense-organs  to  continued  stimulation  at  a  given  time,  which 
may  be  found  an  important  factor  in  learning  by  causing  different  responses  to 
be  successively  tried  out,  has  been  illuminated  recently  by  some  experiments  of 
Selig  Hecht,  described  in  "The  Photic  Sensitivity  of  Ciona  Intestinalis,"  Jour.  Gen. 
Physiol.,  i:  147-166  (1918)  and  "Adaptation  in  the  Photosensitivity  of  Ciona  In- 
testinalis," Science,  N.  S.,  48:  198-201  (1918).  Hecht  recorded  the  reaction-times 
of  this  simple  marine  animal  to  light  stimulations  of  varying  intensities  for  varying 
times  and  at  varying  intervals,  and  the  results  are  strongly  suggestive  of  certain 
inorganic  chemical  reactions.  Light  energy  apparently  decomposes  the  sensitive 
substance  in  the  animal's  '  eye-spot '  into  a  precursor  substance,  which  reaction 
releases  its  response;  but  as  by  continued  stimulation  the  sensitive  substance  is  de- 
composed faster  than  it  can  be  reformed,  a  larger  and  larger  amount  of  precursor 
must  be  formed  to  produce  response.  Finally  an  equilibrium  is  reached  when  no 
response  results  from  stimulation,  and  the  animal  is  '  adapted  to  light.'  When  it  is 
placed  in  darkness  again,  the  reaction  automatically  reverses  (apparently),  as  hap- 
pens in  several  known  chemical  reactions,  and  the  precursor  decomposes  into  hght- 
sensitive  compound  again.  Both  adaptation  and  recovery  of  sensitivity  were  proved 
by  Hecht  to  be  exactly  a  function  of  the  time  (of  stimulation  or  its  absence  re- 
spectively), which  would  be  expected  if  it  were  a  reversible  chemical  reaction.  The 
experiments  thus  point  to  a  chemical  foundation  for  the  Weber-Fechner  law. 

Sherrington,  however,  has  shown  evidence  that  fatigue  is  localized  at  the 
synapses  in  the  central  nervous  system,  and  this  explanation  may  fit  the  analogous 
phenomenon  of  adaptations. 


154  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

we  are  on  our  guard,  harbors  a  ghost-soul  who  is  directing  the 
trying  just  as  a  little  man  would  if  placed  in  control  of  the  ani- 
mal's behavior-mechanism.  If  we  can  account  for  the  facts  with- 
out resort  to  such  an  entity,  we  shall  evidently  be  much  further 
on  the  way  toward  control  of  behavior. 

Antagonism  and  Reinforcement  Among  Responses 

There  is  another  group  of  neurological  facts  which  are  impor- 
tant in  learning,  but  about  which  Httle  need  be  said  here,  as  the 
interpretation  of  them  is  not  yet  clear.  We  mean  the  facts  of  an- 
tagonism and  reinforcement  between  different  responses  in  the 
same  body.  Some  responses  involve  the  use  of  a  common  set  of 
effectors  in  the  same  direction,  and  so  if  both  are  simultaneously 
stimulated,  the  response  will  usually  be  more  vigorous  than  if 
either  is  given  singly,  somewhat  as  a  man  will  ordinarily  do  more 
for  money  and  honor  together  than  for  either  alone.  But  some 
responses  use  the  common  effector  in  opposite  directions,  which 
means  that  they  cannot  both  act  at  once,  —  the  eye  cannot  move 
to  right  and  to  left  at  the  same  time.  The  work  of  the  EngUsh 
physiologist  Sherrington  ^  on  these  relations  between  responses 
has  attracted  universal  attention  among  physiological  psy- 
chologists. Holt  thinks  that  stimuli  which  incite  to  contradictory 
courses  of  action  simply  neutralize  each  other  and  are  not  at- 
tended to,^  but  in  many  cases  there  is  a  response  in  one  direction 
and  then  a  sudden  shift  to  the  other,  as  in  our  interpretation  of  an 
ambiguous  diagram.  And  so  Woodworth  includes  these  facts 
imder  the  head  of  "Mutual  Exclusion  of  Alternative  Responses," 
pointing  out  that  the  neural  mechanisms  are  such  that  different 
responses  to  the  same  general  situation  are  tried  out  one  at  a 
time,  and  not  on  any  parallelogram  of  forces  principle.^ 

Mode  in  which  Pleasure-Pain  Influences  Learning 

Finally  we  must  dissect  the  influences  of  pleasantness  and  un- 
pleasantness on  learning.  This  subject,  because  of  the  disputed 
nature  of  feeling  itself,  is  in  a  very  unsettled  state.   Common  ob- 

1  The  Integrative  Action  of  the  Nervous  System,  1906. 

2  Op.  cit.,  p.  66.  *  Op.  cit.,  Ch.  V. 


THE  LEARNING  PROCESS  l$$ 

servation  has  always  shown  that  pleasant  rewards  tend  to  form 
and  confirm  habits,  while  punishment  tends  to  repel  an  associa- 
tion or  break  up  a  habit.  Thorndike,  among  others,  has  long  held 
this  *  law  of  effect '  to  be  a  principle  in  learning  of  equal  impor- 
tance with  the  '  law  of  use,'  that  is,  of  frequency,  mentioned 
above.^  But  as  the  neurological  formulations  of  this  law  of  effect 
proposed  by  him  and  by  others  have  not  been  entirely  plausible, 
a  diversity  of  views  among  the  students  has  persisted.  Hobhouse 
and  S.  J.  Holmes  have  proposed  instead  a  theory  of  *  congruity  of 
response,'  which  calls  attention  to  the  relations  of  individual  re- 
flexes to  each  other  within  the  larger  response,  in  order  to  account 
for  such  instances  as  a  chick's  avoiding  a  certain  variety  of  cater- 
pillar after  experiencing  its  bitter  taste.^  Watson  shies  at  the  idea 
of  states  of  consciousness  acting  upon  reflexes,  and  he  renews  the 
attempt  to  explain  learning  wholly  on  the  principles  of  contiguity 
and  frequency,  disregarding  pleasure  and  pain  altogether.^  There 
are,  of  course,  many  variations  of  these  positions  among  the 
authorities. 

We  have  already  noticed  that  Hobhouse's  principle  is  impor- 
tant in  learning  (it  is  similar  to  the  point  made  by  Peterson  in  the 
note  above,  p.  1 53) ,  but  it  throws  no  light  on  the  influence  of  affec- 
tion on  habit-formation.  As  Thorndike  retorts,  a  cat  can  be 
taught  to  scratch  herself  in  order  to  get  the  cage  opened,  just  as 
easily  as  she  can  be  taught  to  press  the  lever,  though  in  the  first 
case  there  is  no  congruity  between  the  two  results.  And  Watson 
himself  gives  us  data  showing  that  learning  is  accomplished  faster 
when  both  reward  and  punishment  are  used  than  when  either  one 
is  employed  alone  (p.  200). 

Conditioned  Reflex  and  Pleasure-Pain 

The  whole  matter  becomes  clearer  when  we  adopt  the  view  that 
pleasantness  and  unpleasantness  are  always  the  conscious  corre- 
lates of  instinctive  seeking  and  avoiding  reactions,  and  apply  the 
principle  of  the  conditioned  reflex  or  of  contiguity.   It  is  curious 

1  See  his  Original  Nature  of  Man,  Chs.  IX,  XII. 

2  Holmes,  article  cited,  and  studies  in  Animal  Behavior  (1916),  Ch.  III. 

3  Behavior,  Ch.  VII. 


156  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

indeed,  how  slow  the  behaviorists  have  been  to  work  this  appUca- 
tion  into  the  formulation  of  learning.  Woodworth  has  at  last 
made  it  in  one  passage,  where  he  describes  the  learning  of  a  mouse 
under  punishment  (Yerkes'  experiments) .  The  mouse  can  escape 
from  its  cage  through  either  one  of  two  passages,  one  passage 
always  being  marked  with  a  white  arch  and  the  other  with  a  black 
arch,  these  marks  being  frequently  interchanged.  When  the 
mouse  chooses  the  white-arched  passage,  he  gets  an  electric 
shock,  and  by  a  number  of  trials  he  learns  to  steer  clear  of  the 
white  arch  wherever  it  may  be.  Woodworth  explains: 

The  avoidance  of  the  pain-giving  passage  can  be  understood  as  a  case  of 
conditioned  reflex;  the  sight  of  the  passage  is  quickly  followed  by  the  shock, 
which  calls  out  the  avoiding  reaction,  and  thus  the  sight  of  the  passage  comes 
itself  to  evoke  the  avoiding  reaction,  while  the  exploring  reaction,  incom- 
patible with  the  avoiding  reaction,  is  shunted  out.' 

There  is  the  whole  case  in  a  nutshell,  yet  Woodworth,  in  his 
more  exact  chapter  on  the  learning  process,  refers  vaguely  to  the 
'  law  of  effect,'  without  in  the  least  indicating  how  that  law 
operates  (p.  117).  The  stock  examples,  Hobhouse's  chick  and 
caterpillar,  Meynert's  child  and  candle,  are  identical  in  principle. 
All  students  agree  that  there  must  be  native  reactions  which  cause 
the  chick  to  spit  out  the  caterpillar  in  the  first  experience,  or  the 
child  to  retract  its  hand  from  the  flame;  and  the  possibility  of  at- 
taching native  reflexes  to  originally  indifferent  stimuli  is  well- 
known  through  the  experiments  on  the  conditioned  reflex. 
Pavlov's  experiments  indicate  how  the  'pleasure'  of  eating 
'stamps  in'  the  act  which  has  at  last  attained  the  food.  When 
the  dog  gets  a  stimulus  which  has  been  experienced  in  contiguity 
with  food  a  few  times,  his  sahva  starts  flowing  and  he  is  already 
'in  imagination'  eating  the  food.  This  phenomenon  means  that 
the  complex  of  instinctive  food-seeking  and  eating  mechanisms 
comes  to  be  set  in  action  by  the  originally  indifferent  object,  and 
these  mechanisms,  like  those  of  the  emotional  and  affective  re- 
actions in  general,  lend  a  special  vigor  to  the  animal's  total  re- 
sponse. It  may  be  that  the  vigor  of  the  '  consummatory  '  reaction 
helps  to  establish  the  successful  preceding  act  more  quickly  than 

1  Op.  cit.,  p.  88. 


THE  LEARNING  PROCESS  1 57 

on  ordinary  frequency  principles.  At  any  rate,  we  see  that  eating- 
reactions  or  other  pleasant  (that  is,  sought-for)  results  may  be 
associated  with  the  visual  stimulus  of  a  black-arched  alley,  or  of  a 
lever  in  a  cage,  etc.,  and  avoiding  or  unpleasant  reactions  can  be 
transferred  to  such  stimuli  as  the  sight  of  bad-tasting  caterpillars 
or  of  flames,  all  on  the  ordinary  principles  of  the  conditioned  re- 
flex, and  the  puzzles  of  pleasure  and  pain  as  motives  are  in  a  fair 
way  of  being  solved. 

Herrick  gives  an  anecdote  to  illustrate  the  method  whereby 
new  nerve-paths  are  formed,  which  brings  out  the  point  con- 
cretely : 

A  collie  dog  which  I  once  owned  acquired  the  habit  of  rounding"up  my 
neighbor's  sheep  at  very  unseasonable  times.  The  sight  of  the  flock  in  the 
pasture  (stimulus  R-i)  led  to  the  pleasurable  reaction  (E-i)  of  chasing  the 


sheep  up  to  the  barnyard.  It  became  necessary  to  break  up  the" habit  at 
once  or  lose  a  valuable  dog  at  the  hands  of  an  angry  farmer  with  a^shotgun. 
Accordingly,  I  walked  out  to  the  pasture  with  the  dog.  She  at  once  brought 
in  the  sheep  of  her  own  accord  and  then  ran  up  to  me  with  every  expression 
of  canine  pride  and  self-satisfaction,  whereupon  I  immediately  gave  her  a 
severe  whipping  (stimulus  R-2).  This  called  forth  the  reaction  (E-2)fof 
rvmning  home  and  hiding  in  her  kennel.  The  next  day  (the  dog  and  I  having 
meanwhile  with  mutual  forgiveness  again  arrived  at  friendly  relations)  we 
took  a  walk  in  a  different  direction,  in  the  course  of  which  we  unexpectedly 
met  another  flock  of  sheep.  At  sight  of  these  the  dog  immediately,  with  no 
word  from  me,  put  her  tail  between  her  legs,  ran  home  as  fast  as  possible,  and 
hid  in  her  kennel.  Here  the  stimulus  R-i  led  not  to  its  own  accustomed  re- 
sponse, E-i,  but  to  E-2,  evidently  under  the  influence  of  vestigial  traces  of 
the  previous  day's  experience,  wherein  the  activities  of  C-i  and  C-2  were 
related  through  the  associational  tract  (A,A)  passing  between  them.^ 

1  Op.  cit.,p.  68. 


158  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

Transfer  of  Emotional  Reaction  —  'Acquired 

Interests  ' 

There  is  abundant  evidence  also  that  emotional  reactions  are 
constantly  being  transferred  from  their  original  objects  to  new 
stimuli,  on  conditioned  reflex  or  association  principles;  and  this 
circumstance  indicates  that  we  are  correct  in  assuming  emotion 
and  feeling  to  be  underlain  by  similar  mechanisms. 

Daily  life  is  full  of  examples.  Who  has  not  felt  an  unreasoning 
like  or  dislike  toward  some  person  with  whom  he  had  no  acquaint- 
ance? If  the  matter  were  sifted  down  it  would  be  found  that  some 
association  accounted  for  it,  —  the  unknown  individual  perhaps 
resembled  another  whom  the  subject  had  good  cause  to  dislike. 
Who  has  not  felt  a  thrill  of  joy  or  sadness  at  the  sight  of  some 
insignificant  object  which  had  belonged  to  a  dear  one,  —  a  little 
pair  of  shoes,  a  ring,  a  photograph?  People  whose  experience  with 
telegrams  has  been  chiefly  in  connection  with  family  deaths  ex- 
perience the  symptoms  of  fear  whenever  a  telegram  of  any  sort 
arrives.  A  faint  odor,  a  snatch  of  tune,  will  often  reflexly  arouse  a 
slight  vague  emotional  feeling  which  we  are  at  loss  to  account  for 
until  suddenly  we  remember  the  associating  links.  Fear  of  the 
dark,  as  we  know,  is  more  than  half  traceable  to  foolish  tales 
heard  in  childhood. 

The  '  power  of  association '  is  commonly  taken  for  granted, 
like  the  power  of  pleasure  or  pain;  but  we  are  concerned  to  em- 
phasize that  these  transfers  of  emotional  feeling  are  not  merely 
association  of  ideas,  but  are  acquired  links  between  stimuli  and 
responses.  As  some  of  our  examples  have  shown,  the  ideas  or  con- 
scious correlates  are  frequently  so  abridged  that  they  give  us  no 
clue  to  the  original  bonds  of  association;  but  when  we  realize  that 
the  neural  processes  form  the  more  complete  and  constantly 
active  system,  we  can  detect  the  machinery  of  association  at  work 
even  when  it  has  become  partly  unconscious. 

It  is  only  by  means  of  this  transfer  of  affective  reactions  that  we 
acquire  '  interest '  in  the  greater  part  of  that  variety  of  objects 
which  make  up  our  world.  Originally  our  reactions  are  adjusted 
to  but  few  stimuli.  Supposing  that  the  primary  emotions  are  fear, 


THE  LEARNING  PROCESS  1 59 

rage,  love,  elation,  subjection,  and  possibly  grief  and  mirth,  the 
fear  responses  in  the  human  infant  are  only  to  the  situations  of 
falling,  sudden  noises,  and  shakes.  The  rage  reactions  are  only  to 
physical  hamperings  of  its  movements;  ^  elation  and  subjection 
are  chiefly  elicited  by  smiles  and  frowns,  etc.  If  we  allow  for  the 
maturing  of  instinctive  apparatus  in  the  course  of  bodily  develop- 
ment, we  shall  have  to  enlarge  this  list  somewhat,  but  it  will  re- 
main small  compared  with  the  adult  human  being's  actual  range 
of  emotional  stimuli.  Then  there  are  apparently  a  larger  group 
of  stimuH  which  instinctively  bring  the  minor  affective  reactions 
(pleasantness  and  unpleasantness) ,  but  this  group  also  is  small  by 
comparison  with  the  range  of  our  actual  sophisticated  likes  and 
dislikes. 

Throughout  life  we  keep  acquiring  new  inlets  to  these  responses, 
as  the  adequate  stimuli  are  experienced  in  close  conjunction  with 
new  stimuli  (which  may  have  no  causal  relation  with  the  first  at 
all).  The  infant  in  a  few  months  experiences  a  pleasant  complex 
of  affective  feeling  at  the  sight  of  his  mother,  and  this  is  frequently 
followed  quickly  by  a  burst  of  rage  if  the  '  anticipated  '  food  is  not 
forthcoming.  The  pleasant  complex  is  composed  of  associations 
with  the  adequate  stimuli  of  food,  soothing  motions,  pressure  and 
smiles,  let  us  say.  In  the  same  way  the  rage  response  can  be  at- 
tached to  the  sight  of  a  disagreeable  person  who  has  tormented 
the  infant  on  several  occasions;  and  moreover  this  rage  response 
can  be  transferred  again  to  anyone  who  looks  somewhat  like  that 
disagreeable  person.  A  striking  point  in  Watson  and  Morgan's 
experiments  is  that  infants  do  not  originally  fear  flashes  of  bright 
light.  They  do  fear  sudden  loud  noises,  and  the  authors  conclude 
that  the  fearful  feeling  experienced  by  most  adults  at  flashes  of 
lightning  is  a  conditioned  reflex  established  by  the  thunder  which 
usually  follows. 

We  can  now  give  a  little  more  exactness  to  McDougall's  con- 
tention that  the  instinct's  *  central  core  '  of  emotion  remains 
unchanged  throughout  the  alterations  of  original  responses  by 
habits  which  adjust  the  subject  to  his  special  environment.  Our 
inner  reactions,  including  glandular  secretions,  heart  action,  and 

^  Watson  and  Morgan,  loc.  cit. 


l6o  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

so  on  (which  seem  to  give  much  of  the  emotional  consciousness), 
do  naturally  remain  intact  as  the  group  is  transferred  from  the 
original  situation  and  response  to  other  situations  and  other  re- 
sponses. There  is  no  way  of  breaking  them  up.  The  stimuli  in- 
citing us  to  rage,  for  example,  and  our  responses  thereto,  change 
progressively  as  we  grow  older.  But  when  we  are  aroused,  by  satire 
against  ourselves,  to  satire-reactions  of  speech  or  writing,  our  total 
response  still  contains  the  inner  changes  of  rage,  which  are  prepar- 
ing our  body  for  driving  its  fists  and  teeth  home,  and  for  repairing 
the  wounds  inflicted  by  its  opponent.  These  hereditary  precau- 
tions, incidentally,  interfere  somewhat  with  our  effectiveness  in 
the  satire-combat,  for  they  *  muddle  '  our  thinking. 

But  McDougall  does  not  limit  the  instinct  of  pugnacity  to  these 
inner  reactions  which  remain  intact;  to  him  the  whole  process  of 
perception,  feeling  and  expression  is  the  instinct;  the  emotional 
consciousness  is  unique  and  unanalyzable  and  not  accounted  for 
by  inner  sensations;  and  this  conscious  core  operates  on  the  outer 
world  with  some  discretion,  partially  by  habits  acquired  through 
the  old  laws  of  association  of  ideas  and  by  the  magical  efl&cacy  of 
pain  and  pleasure.  On  all  these  points,  as  will  be  gathered  from 
the  previous  discussion,  we  believe  he  has  fallen  into  the  error  of 
pseudo-simplicity,  though  in  the  most  general  way  his  account  is 
a  true  one. 

Foregoing  Illuminates  Shand's  Doctrine  of  '  Sen- 
timent '  AND  Freudian  *  Ubertragung  ' 

There  is  another  doctrine  which  McDougall  has  popularized, 
to  which  this  scheme  of  the  transfer  of  emotional  reactions  sup- 
plies more  definiteness  and  accuracy,  —  that  is  Shand's  concep- 
tion of  the  '  sentiment.^  Sentiment  is  the  technical  term  given  by 
these  authors  to  a  system  of  primary  instincts  and  emotions  or- 
ganized by  experience  around  a  single  object.  It  is  clear,  as  they 
point  out,  that  some  of  the  instincts  of  practically  any  person 
come  to  be  aroused  in  behalf  of  some  other  person  or  of  some 
thing,  in  much  the  same  manner  that  they  were  originally  aroused 
in  behalf  of  the  agent's  own  body.  Love  is  a  common  sentiment, 

1  McDougall,  op.  cit.,  Ch.  V;  A.  F.  Shand,  Foundations  of  Character. 


THE  LEARNING  PROCESS  l6l 

as  distinguished  from  the  original  passion  or  emotion.  A  mother, 
for  instance,  by  her  experiences  with  her  child  and  thoughts  of  it 
before  its  birth,  comes  not  only  to  display  instinctive  parental 
behavior  toward  it  but  also  to  experience  fear  when  the  child  is  in 
danger,  anger  when  it  is  threatened  or  disparaged,  elation  when 
it  is  praised,  and  so  on.  A  man  may  also  acquire  a  sentiment  of 
love  for  another  man,  or  for  such  an  object  as  a  dog;  and  we  are 
well  aware  that  the  sentiment  of  hate  is  possible.  In  the  latter 
case  the  hater's  instincts  are  aroused  inversely  with  reference  to 
the  situation  of  the  object,  —  he  is  elated  when  the  hated  object  is 
despised,  angry  when  it  prospers,  disgusted  and  angry  in  its 
presence,  etc. 

Ideal  sentiments  are  of  the  same  nature,  so  that  for  the  sake  of 
justice  or  religion  or  patriotism  men  have  feared  and  exulted  and 
died.  The  original,  naively  egoistic  instincts  may  thus  be  or- 
ganized by  means  of  habits  to  dispose  the  agent's  energy  in  any 
altruistic  cause  within  the  limits  of  educabUity.  McDougall 
traces  at  length  the  development  of  the  "  self -regarding  senti- 
ment," which  refers  to  the  organization  of  instincts  with  regard  to 
the  agent's  own  body  and  social  environment. 

James  had  already  made  much  the  same  point  in  his  discus- 
sion of  the  various  selves. 

Our  immediate  family  is  a  part  of  ourselves.  .  .  .  When  they  die  a  part  of 
our  very  selves  is  gone.  If  they  do  anything  wrong,  it  is  our  shame.  If  they 
are  insidted,  our  anger  flashes  forth  as  readily  as  if  we  stood  in  their  place.^ 

Our  home,  our  work,  are  the  subjects  of  similar  instinctive  reac- 
tions on  our  part,  he  says. 

The  Freudian  school  has  given  attention  to  a  different  kind  of 
'  sentiment '  than  these  British  psychologists  discuss,  —  namely, 
the  abnormal  cases  which  are  prominent  in  insanity.  Displaced 
^  affects,'  usually  of  a  sexual  nature,  play  a  leading  role  in  the 
Freudian  discussions,  especially  in  Freud's  earlier  and  formative 
period  of  the  Studies  in  Hysteria.  The  hysterical  person  suffers 
anesthesia,  hallucinatory  pains  or  other  symptoms,  the  origin  of 
which  is  quite  unknown  to  him.  The  psychoanalyst,  by  attention 
to  the  patient's  personal  history,  dreams,  and  free  associations, 

^  Briefer  Course,  p.  178. 


1 62  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

discovers  that  the  trouble  originated  through  association  with 
some  unfortunate  love  affair,  perhaps  connected  with  a  tragedy 
of  illness  and  death.  We  can  better  consider  the  Freudian  system 
as  a  whole,  and  the  general  problem  of  '  sentiment-building ' 
after  we  have  discussed  the  reasoning  process  and  the  develop- 
ment of  personaUty;  but  it  is  to  be  remarked  here  that  a  great 
deal  of  the  Freudian  data  on  what  they  call  tJbertragung  or  trans- 
fer of  affect,  is  translatable  into  physiological  psychology  in  terms 
of  conditioned  emotional  reflexes,^  and  is  therefore  of  much  poten- 
tial value  in  determining  the  limits  of  human  emotional  educa- 
bility.  For  this  matter  of  limits  —  to  what  extent  can  desirable 
and  reliable  'sentiments'  be  manufactured  by  social  control?  — 
is  the  outstanding  problem  suggested  by  the  doctrine  of  the  senti- 
ment. We  shall  see  what  generahties  can  as  yet  be  hazarded  on 
the  subject  when  we  have  finished  our  survey  of  the  motive- 
building  process. 

1  Dr.  F.  L.  Wells,  in  a  note,  "Von  Bechterew  and  Ubertragung,"  Jour.  Phil. 
Psy.  and  Sci.  Methods,  13:  354-356  (1916)  points  out  that  Bechterew's  hints  bring 
the  Freudian  "transference"  and  the  physiologist's  "conditioned  reflex"  together. 
Watson  develops  the  point  in  "Behavior  and  the  Concept  Mental  Disease,"  Ibid.^ 
pp.  589-597. 


CHAPTER  XII 

LEARNING,  REASONING  AND  RATIONALITY 

Learning  Process  Believed  to  Explain  Reasoning 

By  our  account  of  the  original  behavior-apparatus  and  of  the 
methods  by  which  additional  apparatus  is  acquired  (learning),  we 
have  to  a  considerable  extent  described  the  nature  of  intelligence. 
Intelligence  means  ability  to  adapt  oneself  to  unfamiliar  cir- 
cumstances, that  is,  to  achieve  his  purposes  in  situations  for 
which  he  possesses  no  completely  fashioned  instinctive  or  habit- 
ual response-mechanisms.  We  have  seen  in  what  combinations  of 
simple  processes  this  *  ability  '  consists  in  its  lower  stages. 

But  doubtless  it  seems  to  the  reader  that  we  have  left  out  just 
the  essence  of  human  intelligence,  or  at  least  of  human  rationality. 
Between  the  cat  solving  the  puzzle-box,  it  will  be  said,  and  the 
statesman  guiding  a  nation,  there  is  an  unexplained  gap.  If  we 
answer  that  the  difference  is  in  the  original  instincts  and  organs, 
especially  in  the  relative  brain  masses  which  limit  the  possible 
range  of  learning  —  that  is,  in  the  extent  of  possible  habit- 
formation  —  we  shall  very  likely  be  told  that  over  and  above  this 
difference,  the  phenomena  of  thought  make  a  fimdamental  dis- 
tinction. Men  do  not  respond  merely  to  immediate  stimuli;  their 
behavior  is  largely  governed  by  ideas,  many  of  which  represent 
future,  remote,  and  non-existent  objects.  It  is  characteristic  of 
the  human  being  that  he  solves  his  problems  in  thought.  Some 
strong  interest  takes  possession  of  him,  an  interest  which  as  like  as 
not  bears  no  discernible  relation  to  his  instincts  or  to  pain  or 
pleasure,  and  this  interest  determines  the  general  direction  of  his 
thoughts  for  days  or  hours.  It  selects  and  rejects  ideas  according 
to  the  man's  vague  knowledge  that  they  are  or  are  not  taking  him 
toward  his  goal.  When  his  thoughts  wander,  this  warm  interest 
brings  him  back  to  relevant  considerations.  Finally  he  has  rea- 
soned out  the  solution  which  permits  him  to  succeed  in  some  new 

163 


164  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

and  untried  practical  enterprise.  A  man  who  is  put  in  a  puzzle- 
box  will  not  paw  around  at  random  until  accidentally  he  operates 
the  lever;  he  will  sit  down  and  appraise  the  situation  and  presently 
infer  that  the  lever  is  the  most  promising  point  of  attack. 

In  spite  of  the  plausibility  of  this  line  of  argument,  there  are 
good  reasons  to  believe  that  it  is  based  on  illusory  appearances, 
and  that  '  trial  and  error  '  learning  and  reasoning  differ  not  in 
nature  but  only  in  the  instinctive  and  habitual  reactions  involved, 
more  especially  in  the  complexity  of  the  association  tracts. 
*  Complexity  '  here  means  nothing  more  than  the  number  of 
neuron  connections  involved  within  the  central  nervous  system, 
chiefly  in  the  cerebral  cortex. 

Trial  and  Error  in  Imagination 

Let  us  first  consider  the  differences  which  ideas,  imagination  or 
thought  make.  Suppose  that  all  thought  is,  as  the  hypothesis  we 
have  mentioned  assumes,  a  series  of  imaginal  revival  of  sensa- 
tions (with  some  admixture  of  actual  sensations),  and  that  any 
sensation  or  its  image  is  always  correlated  with  the  activity  of  a 
certain  reflex  circuit  or  combination  of  circuits.  In  addition  to 
the  many  other  groimds  which  commend  some  hypothesis  of  this 
general  nature  to  a  nimiber  of  modern  psychologists,  we  have 
seen  that  support  is  afforded  it  by  the  parallelism  between 
muscular  habit  and  association  of  ideas.  We  know  that  when  two 
responses  have  occurred  closely  together  in  time  on  several  oc- 
casions, the  recurrence  of  one  brings  about  some  activity  in  the 
other.  How  much  activity  is  thus  aroused  in  the  second  depends 
on  a  number  of  circumstances,  including  the  strength  of  the  asso- 
ciation and  the  other  contemporaneous  activities  of  the  body. 
Under  conditions  such  as  Pavlov  provided  for  his  dogs,  the  second 
response  was  active  on  the  overt  level,  it  was  a  conditioned  reflex 
which  could  be  easily  observed  by  the  onlooker  from  the  gross 
behavior  of  the  dog. 

But  in  our  own  life  we  know  that  the  recurrence  of  the  first  of 
the  associated  responses  often  arouses  the  second  only  as  an  idea, 
not  to  the  extent  of  overt  behavior.  James'  absent-minded  man 
may  only  think  of  getting  out  his  key  when  the  response  of  per- 


LEARNING,  REASONING  AND  RATIONALITY  l6$ 

ceiving  a  doorstep  occurs.  We  step  out  of  doors  and  discover  that 
it  is  raining.  If  we  have  our  umbrella,  up  it  goes  from  force  of 
habit.  But  if  we  have  neglected  to  provide  one,  we  only  think  of 
having  one,  we  imagine  its  appearance  and  probably  the  feel  of 
raising  it.  According  to  the  above  general  kind  of  hypothesis, 
many  of  the  same  reflexes  are  operative  in  either  the  overt  or  the 
ideal  response,  the  difference  being  in  the  degree  of  activity  or 
muscular  tension.  Similarly  with  all  other  imaginal  or  thought 
processes:  they  are  believed  to  depend  on  associations  with  some 
context  of  actual  sensations  or  responses,  though  by  short-cutting 
from  one  idea  to  another  without  reviving  all  the  intervening 
experiences,  the  course  of  imagination  makes  combinations  of 
images  which  do  not  as  a  whole  correspond  to  any  reality. 

Returning  now  to  the  cat  in  the  cage;  has  she  any  ideas?  The 
psychologists  dispute  about  that  question,  but  all  agree  that  she 
forms  conditioned  reflexes  (learns  habits),  the  like  of  which,  as  we 
have  seen,  probably  underHe  all  our  own  ideas.  So  that  when 
Pavlov's  dog  secretes  saliva  at  the  sight  of  food,  or  of  the  red  light 
associated  with  food,  and  makes  other  responses  characteristic  of 
eating,  we  may  suppose  without  making  ourselves  utterly  irre- 
sponsible that  he  '  imagines  '  himself  tasting  the  food,  and  imag- 
ines it  so  strongly  that  some  of  his  reflexes  have  become  fully 
active.  His  experiences  may  well  be  comparable  to  ours  in  similar 
circumstances.  In  any  educable  animal,  a  stimulus  which  has 
been  experienced  several  times  in  connection  with  food,  sex 
gratification,  liberation  from  confinement,  etc.,  will  '  catch  the 
animal's  attention  '  when  his  physiological  state  is  suitable,  be- 
cause the  responses  of  attention  to  it  and  of  satisfying  the  appe- 
tite become  active  together  and  reinforce  one  another. 

In  similar  fashion  the  animal  '  remembers  '  unpleasant  effects 
connected  with  a  given  stimulus.  We  have  seen  that  he  learns  to 
avoid  the  most  conventional  signs  connected  by  contiguity  with 
punishment  (e.g.,  the  mouse  and  the  white-arched  passage), 
presumably  because  the  instinctive  avoiding  reaction  is  aroused 
by  the  attention  response.  But  when  the  mouse  avoids  the  white- 
arched  passage  after  learning  the  trick,  or  when  the  chick  steers 
clear  of  the  nasty  caterpillar,  we  do  not  see  them  going  overtly 


1 66  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

through  all  the  original  responses  of  pain.  Rather,  we  may  as- 
sume, the  aversion  is  chiefly  in  '  idea  ' ;  the  mouse  '  feels  disgust 
at  the  sight  of  '  that  gate;  somewhat  as  we  do  at  thistles  or  other 
things  which  have  borne  witness  to  our  unpleasant  experiences. 

There  are  other  lines  of  evidence  which  have  convinced  many 
students  of  animal  behavior  that  some  lower  animals  have  ideas, 
in  the  more  complex  sense  of  carrying  out  a  chain  of  responses  in 
imaginal  terms.  Dogs,  for  instance,  seem  to  be  disturbed  by  bad 
dreams ;  and  they  are  said  sometimes  to  make  gestures  to  draw 
their  masters'  attention  to  some  situation  they  have  discovered, 
and  so  on.  Yerkes  recently  found  that  a  young  orang-utan,  after  a 
number  of  trials  on  the  problem  of  choosing  the  first  door  to  the 
left  out  of  a  varying  number  of  open  doors,  suddenly  mastered 
the  trick.  Because  of  the  similarity  of  this  learning  curve  to  the 
curves  of  human  subjects  on  rational  problems,  Yerkes  believes  it 
indicates  '  ideation  '  in  the  orang-utan.^ 

In  our  opinion,  it  is  not  necessary  to  attribute  complex  ideal 
solutions  to  the  lower  animals  in  order  to  assume  that  they  have 
*  ideas,'  because  one  imaginal  step  like  the  (incipient)  shrinking 
from  an  object  of  painful  experience  contains  the  germ  of  thought. 
If  we  had  an  accumulation  of  cases  in  which  lower  animals  had, 
under  careful  observation,  solved  problems  of  several  stages  with- 
out having  recourse  to  the  expected  series  of  overt  experiments, 
we  should  say  that  unquestionably  the  trial  and  error  had  been 
accomplished  in  imagination. 

Now  what  has  all  this  to  do  with  human  rationality?  The 
answer  is  to  be  found  in  the  concluding  sentence  above :  reason- 
ing is  just '  trial  and  error  accomplished  in  the  imagination.'  And 
not  altogether  in  imagination  either,  for  the  crucial  step  in  all 
reasoning  is  proving  its  validity  by  some  operation  on  the  en- 
vironment, by  some  objective  test  or  trial,  which  may  prove  the 
solution  to  be  an  '  error.'  We  do  not  press  the  point  of  animal 
consciousness,  for  we  must  remember  that  there  are  numerous 
unconscious  habits  operating  constantly  in  human  beings.  We 
do  not  press  the  point  that  the  physiological  basis  of  all  thought  is 

1  R.  M.  Yerkes,  The  Mental  Life  of  Monkeys  and  Apes:  A  Study  of  Ideational 
Behavior  (Behavior  Monograph  No.  12),  1916,  p.  68. 


LEARNING,  REASONING  AND  RATIONALITY  167 

probably  the  reflexes  correlated  with  images.  But  we  develop  the 
matter  through  these  stages  of  speculation  in  order  to  join  hands 
with  the  psychologists  of  reasoning,  who  on  introspective  and 
gross  behavior  evidence,  are  coming  more  and  more  to  consider 
reasoning  as  having  the  same  fundamental  character  as  the  learn- 
ing of  any  motor  trick,  whether  by  lower  animal  or  by  human 
being.^ 

But  the  difference  in  detail  and  in  common-sense  apprehension 
is  so  great  that  we  must  attempt  to  analyze  the  mechanisms  of 
reasoning,  in  order  that  this  alleged  identity  between  the  two  may 
become  at  all  plausible.  In  the  present  state  of  knowledge  we 
cannot  demonstrate  the  identity  very  completely,  yet  we  beheve 
a  high  degree  of  probability  can  be  established. 

Psychological  Process  of  Reasoning  Distinguished 
FROM  Logical  Statement 

First  we  must  make  the  distinction,  now  frequently  pointed 
out,  between  the  psychological  process  of  reasoning  and  the  formal 
statement  of  a  chain  of  reasoning  after  the  problem  has  been 
solved. 

*  For  instance  Woodworth:  "In  general,  then,  the  process  gone  through  in 
original  activity  has  the  form  of  varied  reaction  and  trial  and  error,  with  some  de- 
gree of  control  and  generalization.  The  process  may  be  restated  thus:  The  in- 
dividual is  confronted  by  a  situation  to  which  he  attempts  to  react  but  meets  with 
obstruction.  This  stimulates  him  to  exploration  and  varied  attempts  at  escape.  The 
situation,  being  complex,  offers  many  points  of  attack,  many  features  which,  being 
observed,  suggest  or  evoke  reactions  in  accordance  with  past  experience.  The 
difficulty  is,  to  find  the  right  feature  to  react  to,  or,  in  other  words,  so  to  perceive 
the  situation  as  to  be  able  to  bring  our  existing  equipment  into  successful  use" 
{Op.  cit.,  p.  143).  And  Thorndike:  "Thinking  and  reasoning  do  not  seem  to  be  in 
any  useful  sense  opposites  of  automatism,  custom,  or  habit,  but  simply  the  action  of 
habits  in  cases  where  the  elements  of  the  situation  (problem)  compete  and  cooperate 
notably."  —  "The  Psychology  of  Thinking  in  the  Cases  of  Reading,"  Psy.  Rev., 
24:  233  (1917).  And  Joseph  Peterson:  "Rational  learning  does  not  seem  to  differ 
from  the  usual  trial  and  error  learning  in  any  important  manner  except  in  the  ex- 
plicitness  with  which  the  various  elements  in  the  situation  are  reacted  to  and  re- 
tained for  subsequent  use."  —  "Experiments  in  Rational  Learning,"  Psy.  Rev., 
24:  466  (191 8),  The  treatments  of  reasoning  by  James  and  Titchener  lean  strongly 
in  this  direction,  and  Pillsbury  and  Dewey,  in  the  reference  cited  below,  emphasize 
the  complete  dependence  of  the  process  of  reasoning  on  the  laws  of  association  of 
ideas,  which,  as  we  have  seen,  are  simply  the  laws  of  habit. 


1 68  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

The  process  of  reasoning  is  not  a  matter  of  syllogisms,  but  of 
successive  guesses  at  the  solution,  which  guesses  are  dictated  by 
the  strongest  associations  with  the  special  aspect  of  the  problem 
which,  for  the  moment,  receives  attention  or  is  responded  to.  The 
principles  of  logic,  however,  the  present  writer  believes  to  be  very 
closely  related  to  the  physiological  processes  of  behavior,  in  the 
manner  pointed  out  by  the  old  associationists,  so  that  we  do  not 
consider  the  above  distinction  to  be  a  sharp  one.  The  cat's  re- 
sponses to  a  group  of  stimuU  which  are  common  to  all  dogs,  for 
instance,  amounts  to  an  ability  in  the  cat  to  classify  other  ani- 
mals as  dogs  or  not-dogs.  The  lower  creatures'  logic,  as  well  as 
our  own,  often  leads  them  into  serious  practical  dangers,  and,  as 
James  pointed  out,  our  finer  discrimination  or  nicer  adaptation  of 
responses  to  varying  situations  has  given  us  mastery  over  the 
other  animals,  —  has  given  us  power,  in  short,  to  deceive  them. 
The  mouse  learns  a  response  to  the  object  cheese,  but  often  does 
not  learn  in  time  to  discriminate  the  varying  contexts  of  cheese  so 
as  to  avoid  traps.  The  process  of  induction  corresponds  closely  to 
the  learning  of  responses  in  separate  cases ;  deduction  is  a  matter 
of  hitting  on  the  essential  aspect  or  label  of  a  new  case  so  as  to  use 
an  old  trick  that  is  adequate.  Mice  and  rats  soon  learn  to  grasp 
the  essential  aspect  of  many  varieties  of  trap,  and  so  to  give  the 
adequate  response  of  avoidance  to  them  all. 

But  whatever  the  relation  of  principles  of  logic  to  principles  of 
psychology,  it  is  clear  enough  from  anyone's  experience  that  our 
efforts  to  solve  a  rational  problem  do  not  occur  in  the  order  that 
our  demonstration  of  proof  follows  after  we  have  hit  on  the  solu- 
tion. What  we  do  is  try  out  successively  our  established  reactions 
until  the  stimulation  which  keeps  us  trying  is  stopped  by  a  suc- 
cessful combination  of  reactions. 

Elements  of  Reasoning  Process:  Ambiguity 

To  reason,  we  repeat,  is  essentially  to  use  an  old  trick  or  a  com- 
bination of  old  ones,  to  meet  a  new  difficulty.  A  boy  on  the  farm, 
let  us  say,  sees  a  rabbit  scamper  into  a  brushpile.  The  lad  has 
never  dealt  with  the  particular  situation  before,  but  he  has  killed 
rabbits  and  his  hunting  proclivities  (composed  of  instinctive  and 


LEARNING,  REASONING  AND  RATIONALITY  169 

habitual  elements)  are  aroused.  He  brings  to  bear  the  various 
methods  of  attack  which  different  details  of  the  strange  situation 
suggest,  either  overtly  in  action,  or  in  imaginal  terms,  that  is,  in 
thought.  He  whistles  for  his  dog,  looks  for  a  stone  or  club,  con- 
siders burning  the  brushpile  or  merely  beating  it,  and  even  thinks 
of  trusting  that  the  rabbit  will  stay  there  while  he  goes  for  a  more 
effective  weapon. 

The  strangeness  and  complexity  of  the  situation,  in  each  case, 
illustrates  Dewey's  statement  that  the  provocation  to  reasoning 
is  always  an  ambiguity,  like  a  fork  in  an  unfamiliar  road.  There 
is  no  predominant  response  which  is  immediately  called  out,  but 
there  are  several  responses  which  tend  to  be  weakly  aroused  be- 
cause of  the  ambiguity.  As  soon  as  the  agent  begins  to  attend  to 
specific  features  of  the  matter,  his  established  responses  are  un- 
equivocally aroused  and  are  tried  out  successively,  either  actually 
or  ideally;  but  to  the  situation  as  it  first  presents  itself,  the  total 
attitude  is  one  of  inhibition  and  bewilderment  because  there  is  no. 
ready-made  method  of  dealing  with  it. 

A  purely  intellectual  problem  presents  the  same  kind  of  am- 
biguity. A  'problem'  such  as:  Find  the  square  root  of  2,  involves, 
not  reasoning  but  only  habits,  unless  the  student  is  not  thoroughly 
familiar  with  the  necessary  procedure.  If  he  is  not  sure  how  ta 
carry  it  through,  it  means  just  that  the  situation  is  ambiguous, 
several  lines  of  action  seeming  to  have  about  equal  chances  of 
success. 

Besides  this  character  of  ambiguity,  there  are  three  other  ele- 
ments in  the  reasoning  process  which  are  stressed  by  the  authori- 
ties, namely,  (2)  the  suggestion  of  one  proposed  solution  after 
another,  (3)  the  testing  of  each  solution-candidate  until  one 
proves  successful,  and  (4)  the  purpose  or  drive  which  keeps  the 
agent  trying.  The  last-named  element  is  first  in  time  and  impor- 
tance, but  we  prefer  to  treat  of  it  last.  Assuming  for  the  moment, 
then,  a  dominant  purpose  which  incites  the  reasoner  to  continual 
action,  which  limits  the  range  of  his  guesses  and  finally  is  set  at 
rest  by  a  certain  kind  of  success,  let  us  consider  the  other  two 
elements  further. 


lyo  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

Suggestion  of  Tentative  Solution  by  Association 

The  next  step  in  the  process  is  the  trying  out  of  a  solution  which 
has  '  suggested  itself '  by  virtue  of  the  associations  connected 
with  a  particular  aspect  of  the  problem.  We  have  seen  that  the 
animal  in  the  puzzle-box  shifts  attention  from  one  part  of  the  box 
to  another,  and  gives  the  reactions  which  are  most  firmly  con- 
nected with  these  various  stimuli.  In  mental  reasoning  also,  we 
shift  attention  from  one  part  of  the  problem  to  another,  and  use 
the  associations  which  are  called  up  by  each  feature.  If  we  are 
presented  with  a  mechanical  puzzle,  we  notice  first  one  notch  or 
partial  shape,  then  another,  and  follow  up  the  suggestions  which 
these  different  earmarks  severally  and  jointly  arouse  by  virtue  of 
our  past  experiences.  That  is,  we  act  out  a  habitual  response, 
either  with  our  fingers  or  in  imagination,  first  to  one  and  then  to 
another  stimulus. 

These  tentative  solutions  or  suggestions  constitute  the  crux  of 
the  whole  rational  process.  They  are  the  variations  from  which 
the  conditions  of  external  nature  select  the  right  response,  if  the 
right  one  is  ever  suggested  at  all.  It  is  worth  while,  therefore,  to 
emphasize  the  complete  determination  of  such  suggestions  by  the 
laws  of  association  or  of  habit-formation.   Pillsbury  says, 

If  one  will  but  foUow  through  a  chain  of  reasoning,  it  will  be  observed 
that  the  elements  are  connected  by  the  same  laws  of  association  that  are 
operative  in  the  simplest  recall. ^  Dewey  concurs:  Given  the  facts  AB  CD 
on  one  side  and  certain  individual  habits  on  the  other,  suggestion  occurs 
automatically.^ 

The  reasoning  of  a  woodsman  and  of  a  city  dweller  on  the  situa- 
tion of  being  lost  in  the  woods  will  differ,  therefore,  chiefly  on 
account  of  the  differences  in  their  established  habits.  The  con- 
jecturing, from  a  track  in  the  snow,  of  an  animal  of  certain  appear- 
ance, as  Pillsbury  points  out,  will  be  a  mere  perception  for  the 
guide,  whereas  to  the  city  man  it  will  be  a  process  of  inference. 
The  difference  is  clearly  due  to  their  varying  habits;  the  former 
has  learned  the  exact  response  to  the  stimulus  of  that-shaped  foot- 
print, but  the  latter  must  learn  it  by  a  kind  of  trial  and  error. 

^  W.  B.  Pillsbury,  The  Psychology  of  Reasoning  (1910),  p.  3, 
2  J.  Dewey,  How  We  Think  (1910),  p.  85. 


LEARNING,  REASONING  AND  RATIONALITY  171 

Between  mere  perceptions  and  complex  chains  of  reasoning, 
there  are  the  gradations  of  judgments,  appreciations,  and  infer- 
ences, as  the  same  author  shows.  '  Unconscious  inferences,'  which 
Mr.  Wallas  and  others  have  demonstrated  to  be  so  important  in 
social  life,  are  either  habitual  responses,  containing  several  links 
which  operate  without  giving  explicit  consciousness,  or  are  single 
conditioned  reflexes  into  which  the  inference  is  read  by  the  ob- 
server. The  guide,  that  is  to  say,  may  have  seen  the  footprint 
previously  only  when  the  animal  was  also  on  hand  to  be  compared 
with  it,  so  that  there  is  no  inference  about  his  recognition,  only  an 
association.  Similarly,  if  people  buy  Jones'  soap  rather  than 
Smith's  because  Jones  is  the  heavier  advertiser,  it  is  not  neces- 
sary to  assume  much  inference  at  the  bottom  of  the  process.  The 
advertisements  associate  a  fringe  of  pleasant  feeling  about  the 
concept  of  Jones'  soap,  and  this  vague  fringe  is  enough  to  deter- 
mine the  customer's  preference,  unless  there  are  stronger  coun- 
ter-attractions, such  as  associations  of  poor  quality  and  high  price 
with  the  soap  of  this  same  Jones.  It  is  idle  to  dispose  of  the  old 
associationist  philosophers,  therefore,  by  making  out  of  them  men 
of  straw  who  beHeve  every  human  action  to  be  based  on  conscious 
reasonings,  going  carefully  through  all  the  implicit  steps.  Such, 
however,  is  one  of  the  favorite  methods  of  the  anti-intellectualists. 

There  do,  indeed,  seem  to  be  innate  differences  in  reasoning 
ability,  not  determined  by  mere  range  of  pertinent  associations. 
James  spoke  of  sagacity,  in  addition  to  learning,  as  requisite  for 
good  reasoning.  We  can  hardly  guess  what  the  physiological 
differences  are  which  make  one  mind  a  single-track  affair,  slow 
and  uncertain  in  shifting  attention  from  one  feature  of  the  prob- 
lem, or  from  trying  a  wrong  method,  to  other  more  promising 
aspects,  while  another  mind  is  fertile  in  suggestions  because  it 
does  explore  thoroughly  the  whole  situation.  General  reasoning 
power  is  to  be  cultivated  to  some  extent,  says  Dewey,  by  acquisi- 
tion of  the  habit  of  carefully  diagnosing  any  new  problem  before 
following  out  a  particular  clue.  Such  a  careful  examination  will 
lead  both  to  a  larger  variety  of  automatically  presented  sugges- 
tions, and  to  a  quicker  trying  out  of  the  suggestions  after  the 
diagnosis  is  finished. 


172  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

Testing  of  Proposed  Solutions 

This  third  element,  the  testing  of  proposed  solutions  and  selec- 
tion of  the  right  one,  must  now  engage  our  attention.  Some  such 
process  must  occur  for  every  guess,  though  we  may  not  be  con- 
scious that  these  separate  steps  do  exist.  What  constitutes  the 
success  or  failure  of  a  tentative  solution  is  clear  enough  in  its 
larger  aspect;  it  brings  or  does  not  bring  realization  of  the  pur- 
pose behind  the  reasoning,  by  a  suitable  physical  operation  on  the 
environment.  Success  to  the  cat  is  getting  the  food  and  stopping 
its  hunger;  failure  is  completing  the  '  suggested  '  response  without 
stopping  the  hunger.  Our  own  reasoning  is  often  tested  in  this 
way;  we  see  that  the  puzzle  is  or  is  not  put  into  the  desired  form, 
or  we  do  or  do  not  reach  our  destination.  But  the  test  with  which 
we  stop  satisfied  (temporarily),  in  many  chains  of  reasoning  is  not 
a  practical  one.  It  is  merely  compatibility  of  the  new  solution 
with  several  other  accepted  principles. 

The  psychologists  of  reasoning  dismiss  this  case  with  the  phrase 
"or  the  solution  is  believed  to  be  adequate  for  practical  success."  ^ 
We  shall  try,  however,  to  show  its  relation  to  the  more  simple 
cases. 

This  wholly  introspective  test  of  a  suggestion's  adequacy, 
means  that  the  '  implications  '  of  the  tentative  guess  have  been 
'  mentally  '  explored,  and  the  harmony  or  disharmony  of  these 
consequences  with  the  implications  of  other  accepted  principles  is 
recognized.  A  man  suspects  the  fidelity  of  his  watch,  for  example, 
and  wonders  if  it  has  stopped  an  hour  or  so  and  then  started  again. 
If  no  reliable  timepiece  is  available,  he  has  recourse  to  testing  the 
implications  of  the  time  denoted  by  the  watch  with  the  implica- 
tions of  other  signs,  such  as  the  sun's  position,  the  state  of  his 
appetite,  the  sounds  in  the  distance  and  so  on.  He  may  be  con- 
vinced thereby  that  his  watch  is  correct,  but  the  objective  test 
comes  later  when  he  does  or  does  not  make  his  appointments  on 
time.  In  mathematics  the  process  of  proof  is  wholly  a  matter  of 
comparing  impHcations. 

In  such  a  logical  demonstration,  the  implications  or  conse- 
quences which  follow  from  certain  propositions  are  by  many 

1  See  Pillsbury,  op.  cit.,  p.  lo. 


LEARNING,  REASONING  AND  RATIONALITY  1 73 

logicians  believed  to  proceed  from  an  impersonal,  ultra-mundane 
necessity,  while  the  consequences  from  more  practical  proposi- 
tions, such  as  of  the  time  of  day,  are  supposed  to  be  due  to  natural 
law  of  the  world  as  it  happens  to  exist.  But  there  is  still  a  good 
case  to  be  made  for  Hume's  doctrine  that  our  acquaintance  with, 
and  belief  in,  these  logical  uniformities,  these  '  eternal  verities,' 
is  the  result  merely  of  invariable  practical  associations.  The 
chicken  whose  master  feeds  him  day  after  day,  as  Bertrand  Rus- 
sell says,^  comes  soon  to  '  believe  '  that  the  process  will  go  on 
forever,  though  the  time  comes  when  the  master  wrings  the  bird's 
neck.  It  is  clear,  says  Russell,  that  more  refined  views  on  the 
uniformity  of  nature  would  have  been  useful  to  the  chicken. 

Our  own  beliefs  in  logical  necessity  and  natural  laws  appear 
to  differ  from  such  a  belief  as  this,  first  in  being  borne  out  by  a 
greater  number  of  instances  without  contradiction,  and  also  in 
being  supported  by  a  larger  number  of  congruous  associations. 
Our  faciUties  for  accumulating  instances  beyond  the  range  of  our 
immediate  bodily  stimuli  makes  our  greater  assurance  possible. 
Many  logical  propositions,  to  be  sure,  such  as  those  concerning 
irrational  numbers,  have  no  meaning  in  existential  terms,  but  still 
these  propositions  may  be  wholly  composed  of  propositions  de- 
rived from  our  race's  actual  bodily  experience.  The  question,  of 
course,  is  a  large  metaphysical  one. 

Our  concern  here  is  simply  to  suggest  that  the  process  of  prov- 
ing out  tentative  suggestions  in  the  more  subtle  cases  of  reasoning, 
where  the  test  is  only  congruity  with  other  established  principles 
and  their  implications,  may  plausibly  be  reduced  to  an  acting  out, 
at  the  low  tension  of  imagination,  of  our  previously  established 
responses,  on  principles  identical  with  those  of  the  simplest  learn- 
ing. Some  instinctive  elements  doubtless  remain  in  all  these  es- 
tablished responses,  but  for  the  most  part  they  have  been  learned, 
they  are  habitual.  So  the  reasoner  acts  out  imaginatively  his  new 
supposition  according  to  the  associations  it  automatically  pro- 
duces, and  if  the  '  solution  '  is  incorrect,  presently  he  will  be 
stopped  by  the  innervation  of  contradictory  responses.  His  first 
guess,  let  us  say,  leads  him  through  successive  consequences 

^  The  Problems  of  Philosophy. 


174  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

finally  to  the  proposition  that  there  are  400  degrees  in  a  circle. 
Here  his  progress  is  thwarted  by  the  more  strongly  established 
response  that  there  are  360  degrees  in  a  circle.  The  proposition 
asserted  by  the  unreUable  watch  that  the  shadows  point  north  at 
10  o'clock  is  quenched  by  the  better  established  response  (belief) 
that  the  shadows  point  north  at  noon.  Thus  all  cases  of  unsuccess- 
ful trials  in  reasoning  may,  perhaps,  reduce  to  the  type  of  baffled 
physical  movement  (and  our  feelings  in  such  instances  often  do 
indicate  this  correspondence),  due  to  the  incompatibility  of  our 
suggestion  with  the  facts  of  the  environment. 

This  formulation  of  the  behavior-basis  of  abstract  thought  is 
certainly  bald  and  premature,  and  is  doubtless  unconvincing. 
Our  information  concerning  the  mechanisms  of  the  process  is  still 
slight.  There  are,  however,  several  commonly  recognized  facts  of 
experience  which  lend  support  to  the  above  account. 

The  great  role  played  by  language  must  always  be  borne  in 
mind.  Words  are  short  cuts  through  action  and  through  percep- 
tion. As  we  have  seen,  language  is  a  system  of  habits,  or  of  com- 
pounded conditioned  reflexes.  Words  are  always  learned  by  being 
heard  or  seen  in  close  temporal  contiguity  with  their  '  meaning,' 
which  is  a  setting  of  other  experiences  of  the  learner's  body.  After 
a  small  capital  of  words  is  acquired,  other  words  are  built  upon 
them  as  meaning,  and  so  the  process  goes  on  indefinitely  to  higher 
and  higher  abstractions.  In  connection  with  every  word  of  our 
own  vocabulary,  however,  there  are  vague  sensations  —  visual, 
auditory,  kinesthetic  —  which  come  into  consciousness  with  it 
and  make  up  part  of  its  meaning,  and  the  peculiar  pattern  of  this 
sensation-complex  is  due  to  our  special  experiences  with  that 
word.^  But  though  there  is  something  of  idiosyncrasy  in  the 
meaning  of  any  word  to  each  one  of  us,  the  essential  feature  of 
words  is  that  they  identify  situations  which  are  experienced  in 
common  by  all  people.  The  sound  "Fire!"  will  therefore  start  a 
panic  in  a  theatre  nearly  as  effectively  as  the  sight  of  actual  flame 
and  smoke;  or  if  a  man  says,  "There  was  a  fire  in  a  theatre,"  or 
"I  was  in  a  train  wreck,"  he  conveys  to  us  a  complex  of  images 
which  it  would  take  him  hours  to  act  out  in  pantomime  or 
sketches. 

1  Cf .  Titchener,  Experimental  Psychology  of  the  Thought  Process. 


LEARNING,  REASONING  AND  RATIONALITY  175 

Words  are  shorthand  both  for  stimuU  — -  objects,  qualities,  re- 
lations —  which  have  been  analyzed  out  of  the  rough  mass  of  the 
environment  by  our  ancestors,  and  also  for  the  innumerable  re- 
sponses to  those  stimuli  which  our  race  has  gradually  learned.  It 
is  largely  to  these  ready-made  discriminations  from  the  crude 
situations  we  meet,  of  the  essential  features,  and  to  the  ready- 
made  responses  which  have  been  learned  painfully  before  our 
time,  that  we  owe  our  superiority  to  the  brutes.  Of  course,  our 
absorption  of  this  ready-made  equipment,  as  well  as  the  original 
inventions  of  details  in  it,  were  possible  only  because  of  the  large 
association- tracts  in  our  brains  and  other  physical  pecuHarities.^ 
So  habitual  is  the  use  of  words  to  us  that  our  thoughts  are  usually 
predominantly  composed  of  images  of  uttering  or  hearing  speech 
(kinesthetic-auditory  imagery) . 

Now  human  reasoning  is  carried  on  largely  by  means  of  words; 
and  because  of  their  condensation  of  experience,  they  save  us 
much  time  and  effort.  With  a  certain  accumulation  of  concepts, 
for  example,  men  can  divide  land  approximately  equally  by 
counting  the  furrows  made  in  plowing  it,  but  with  a  larger  stock 
of  concepts  they  can  divide  it  accurately  by  means  of  a  few  meas- 
urements and  calculations.  So  that  the  trains  of  language  which 
the  abstract  reasoner  rattles  off  at  the  low  tension  of  imagination 
are  really  verbal  habits,  which  habits  are  constantly  pruned  and 
checked  by  their  adequacy  in  leading  to  action  and  perception. 

The  next  fact  which  lends  support  to  the  conclusion  that  ab- 
stract reasoning  is  a  matter  of  habits  is  that  in  vast  numbers  of 
cases  a  solution  reached  and  apparently  proved  in  thought  is 
found  inadequate  when  it  is  applied  to  operations  on  the  outer 
world.  If  the  problem  is  even  moderately  complex,  few  of  us  can 
carry  all  its  elements  completely  through  the  reasoning  '  in  our 
mind.'  There  is  a  simple  experiment,  for  example  (used  by  Holt 
in  his  classes) ,  in  which  one  end  of  a  band  of  paper  is  turned  one 
hundred  and  eighty  degrees  and  then  the  two  ends  are  pieced 
together,  leaving  that  half -twist  in  the  circular  band.    The  ob- 

1  There  is  an  illuminating  article  along  these  lines  by  the  physiologist  Ralph  S. 
Lillie,  "What  is  Purposive  and  Intelligent  Behavior  from  the  Physiological  Point  of 
View?"   Jour.  PhU.  Psy.,  etc.,  12:  589-610  (1915). 


176  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

servers  then  predict  what  paper  figures  will  result  from  cutting 
lengthwise  completely  through  this  band.  Few  observers  can 
carry  all  phases  of  the  matter  through  their  calculations  so  as  to 
predict  that  there  will  still  be  but  one  band  with  a  complete  twist 
in  it,  not  two  bands.  Similarly  Pillsbury  mentions  a  skilled 
maker  of  scientific  instruments  who  finds  that  he  can  hardly  ever 
carry  out  his  paper  plans  completely  in  actual  constructions,  some 
obstacle  has  always  been  overlooked.  The  superiority  of  this  final 
objective  test  by  immutable  natural  conditions,  over  mere  sub- 
jective confidence  in  our  '  knowledge,'  is  the  half-truth  back  of 
the  good  old  distinction  between  theory  and  practice. 

This  point  that  subjective  conviction  of  the  validity  of  one's 
reasoning  is  not  a  final  proof,  is  elaborated  by  the  Freudians  under 
the  captions  '  logic- tight  compartments  of  the  mind,'  and  '  ra- 
tionahzation.'  Everyone,  they  think,  maintains  full  belief  in 
each  of  several  contradictory  principles,  without  realizing  the 
contradiction;  and  in  some  varieties  of  insanity  this  blindness  is 
absurdly  exaggerated.  The  patient  who  beheves  herself  a  queen 
still  cheerfully  scrubs  the  floors,  not  perceiving  the  discrepancy 
between  the  two  propositions.^ 

If  such  a  discrepancy  is  dimly  reaHzed,  as  by  a  man  who  is  mean 
in  business  while  professing  himself  a  Christian,  '  rationaliza- 
tion '  is  frequently  resorted  to.  This  man  tells  himself  that  charity 
begins  at  home,  or  that  other  people  are  well  quahfied  to  look  out 
for  their  own  interests,  and  so  on.  That  "The  wish  is  father  to 
the  thought"  in  multitudinous  instances  has  been  patent  to  wise 
men  of  all  times.  The  tendency  extends  from  the  child  whose 
predilection  for  '  make-believe  '  seems  due  to  actual  difficulty  in 
distinguishing  the  imaginary  from  the  real,  down  to  the  most 
cold-blooded  and  logical  scientist,  who  is  occasionally  unable  to 
notice  facts  which  contradict  a  favorite  theory.  Darwin  remarked 
that  it  is  well  for  anyone  to  write  down  immediately  any  such 
contradictory  facts  which  he  does  observe,  since  otherwise  they 
are  likely  to  be  forgotten. 

We  shall  consider  in  a  moment  whether  the  mysterious  ap- 
paratus of  the  *  subconscious '  is  necessary  to  account  for  these 

1  B.  Hart,  The  Psychology  of  Insanity,  pp.  81,  82  (1916). 


LEARNING,  REASONING  AND  RATIONALITY  177 

psychological  phenomena;  but  at  any  rate  the  general  fact  seems 
clear  that  mtrospective  certainty  is  not  as  conclusive  a  proof  of 
correct  reasoning  as  is  successful  operation  on  the  environment, 
which  favors  the  hypothesis  that  abstract  or  wholly  mental  rea- 
soning is  just  trial  and  error  (of  habits)  carried  on  at  the  low 
tension  of  imagination,  with  the  result  that  proposed  solutions  are 
tested  only  by  their  compatibility  or  conflict  with  our  more 
firmly-established  habits.  Our  real  knowledge  is  a  system  of 
habits  which  at  any  time  can  be  successfully  used  in  practice, 
such  as  the  assertion  that  two  and  two  make  four. 

The  Purpose,  Interest  or  Drive,  which  Keeps 
Subject  Trying 

It  remains  to  investigate  the  one  remaining  element  of  the 
reasoning  situation,  the  element  which  appears  first  in  point  of 
time,  the  purpose  or  interest  or  drive,  which  keeps  the  subject 
trying  and  determines  what  will  be  the  right  solution.  It  is  not 
difficult  to  describe  this  element  in  introspective  terms,  and  this 
is  as  far  as  the  theorists  of  reasoning  usually  get.  A  purpose 
arises  in  consciousness,  which  may  be  anything  from  finding  a 
postage  stamp  to  working  out  the  problems  of  the  Peace  Con- 
ference, and  the  '  attraction  '  of  this  interest  keeps  our  thoughts 
upon  matters  which  are  relevant  to  it  until  a  solution  is  found. 
Such  was  Hobbes'  account  of  the  process  of  definitely  directed 
thought,  as  contrasted  with  idle  reverie,  and  modern  psychology 
has  not  greatly  improved  on  it.  The  writings  on  definitely  di- 
rected thought  and  purposiveness  denote  this  directive  entity 
as  Aufgabe  (the  term  of  the  German  writers  Ach  and  Watt), 
*  determining  tendencies,'  '  cortical  set '  and  many  other  terms 
such  as  apperception  and  attention.^  Whatever  the  entity  is,  it 
determines  that  certain  '  relevant '  associations  will  be  called  up 
rather  than  others  which  are  equally  attached  to  the  cue  which 
receives  attention.  Show  a  student  two  numerals  arranged  thus: 
I,  and  according  as  you  say  "Add,"  or  "Multiply,"  or  "Sub- 
tract," different  trains  of  associations  will  be  started  in  the  stu- 
dent's mind  by  these  black  marks. 

^  See  references  in  Titchener,  Experimental  Psychology  of  the  Thought  Process; 
also  Pillsbury,  op.  cit.,  p.  12. 


1 78  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

Titchener  is  emphatically  of  the  opinion  that  this  *  determining 
tendency  '  or  *  cortical  set '  is  a  complex  of  physiological  processes, 
the  resultant  of  the  agent's  personal  history,  some  of  the  proc- 
esses operating  unconsciously,  presumably  according  to  the 
ordinary  '  law  of  decay  '  of  consciousness  which  characterizes  all 
habit.  He  beheves,  as  everyone  not  an  interactionist  must,  that 
there  are  definite  neural  mechanisms  back  of  all  these  purposes, 
impulses  to  action,  and  progressive  trends  of  thought,  but  like 
other  authorities  he  does  not  undertake  to  exhibit  these  mech- 
anisms specifically.  We  shall  attempt,  however,  to  point  out  how 
this  factor  also  may  be  interpreted  in  terms  of  instinct-  and  habit- 
mechanisms,  thus  reducing  them  as  nearly  as  we  can  to  the 
common  denominator  of  the  nervous  system.  So  long  as  we  con- 
fess ourselves  able  to  give  only  an  introspective  report  of  the 
*  selective  agency  '  in  reasoning,  a  redoubtable  stronghold  is  left 
to  the  mystics. 

We  have  used  the  word  *  purpose  '  indifferently  for  the  deter- 
mining tendencies  in  progressive  thought,  in  reasoning,  and  in 
purposive  behavior.  The  students  of  these  varieties  of  the  subject 
are  making  it  clear  that  the  Aufgabe  in  thought,  and  the  purpose 
in  any  teleological  action,  present  exactly  the  same  character- 
istics.^ The  '  set,'  whether  for  the  solution  of  a  mental  problem  or 
for  such  a  practical  task  as  the  finding  of  a  stamp,  brings  up  sug- 
gestions which  are  more  relevant  to  the  problem  than  others 
would  be  which  are  equally  associated  with  the  situation,  and  it 
determines  what  will  be  a  solution. 

Some  of  these  authorities  are  citing  the  '  keep  trying  '  of  the 
hungry  animal  as  a  typical  case,  assuming  that  there  must  be  an 
Aufgabe  in  every  trial  and  error,  or  learning,  situation  (e.  g., 
Professor  Perry  in  the  article  last  cited).  It  may  be  remembered 
that  we  have  already  objected  to  Woodworth's  liunping  together 
the  striving  of  the  hungry  animal  with  the  efforts  of  a  student  to 
solve  a  mathematical  problem.  We  too  believe  there  is  a  funda- 
mental similarity  among  all  these  cases,  but  the  human  deter- 

1  R.  B.  Perry,  "Docility  and  Purpose,"  Psy.  Rev.,  25: 1-20  (1918)  and  other 
articles  on  purpose;  H.  C.  Warren,  "A  Study  of  Purpose,"  Jour.  Phil.  Psy.,  etc., 
13:  5-25,  29-49;  57-72  (1916);  Lillie,  op.  ciL;  Woodworth,  op.  cit. 


LEARNING,  REASONING  AND  RATIONALITY  179 

mining  tendencies  (in  intellectual  purposes)  seem  so  different 
physiologically  from  the  hunger  impulse  that  the  point  is  a  critical 
one.  As  we  have  already  remarked,  the  '  striving  '  of  an  instinct 
or  appetite  is  accounted  for  by  the  continued  impact  of  a  rela- 
tively small  group  of  stimuli,  —  the  '  gnawings  '  of  hunger,  set  up 
by  mechanical  or  chemical  conditions  within  the  body,  the  smell 
of  food,  and  so  on. 

But  where  does  the  stimulation  come  from  in  such  endeavors 
as  hunting  a  stamp  or  hunting  a  house?  Any  purpose  which  an 
adult  human  being  can  entertain  consists  of  thousands  of  reflexes 
integrated  into  a  single  system,  and  each  reflex  is  coimected  with 
a  multitude  of  other  purpose-systems,  so  that  the  chance  of  our 
responses  being  led  off  into  irrelevant  bypaths  of  other  associa- 
tions is  large.  Again,  it  is  rather  unplausible,  that  such  a  mechan- 
ical combination  of  reflexes  as  we  must  consider  a  purpose  to  be, 
can  select  new  responses  which  have  not  previously  been  con- 
nected with  it,  and  can  keep  the  agent  trying  in  a  certain  direction 
until  its  '  end  '  is  achieved. 

The  complexity  of  the  processes  makes  any  explanation  in  the 
present  state  of  knowledge,  unsatisfactory,  but  there  are  some 
suggestions  to  be  made  which  tend  to  lessen  the  mystery.  Most 
of  us  assume,  with  Titchener,  that  the  determining  tendencies 
have  some  kind  of  physical  mechanism,  including  doubtless  many 
habits  which  have  become  capable  of  operating  unconsciously. 
Now  let  us  recall  Professor  Holt's  point  of  the  '  recession  of  the 
stimulus.'  The  substance  of  it  is  that  the  key  to  any  organism's 
behavior  becomes  a  progressively  complex  object  as  the  number 
of  separate  responses  which  the  organism  can  make  is  increased. 
A  man  comes  to  have  thousands  and  probably  millions  of  in- 
dividual reflexes,  which  are  touched  off,  each  by  its  appropriate 
stimulus  —  each  "as  fatal  as  sneezing,"  in  James'  phrase  —  but 
these  reflexes  are  not  coordinate,  they  are  integrated  or  com- 
pounded in  hierarchies.  The  larger  responses,  such  as  hunting  a 
stamp  or  hunting  a  house  or  seeking  fame,  employ  a  great  many 
identical  reflexes,  such  as  those  of  walking,  of  using  the  hands,  the 
eyes,  the  affective  responses,  and  so  on.  The  largest  of  our  con- 
stant responses,  such  as  those  to  social  position  or  to  wealth  or 


l8o  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

fame,  contain  the  smaller,  like  hunting  a  stamp  or  hunting  a 
house,  as  well  as  others  of  various  grades.  These  compounds 
grow  by  accretion,  just  as  the  baby's  originally  complex  response 
of  rage  grows  to  include  rage  at  particular  persons  and  objects. 
Each  response  differs  from  every  other  in  its  pattern,  in  the  way 
its  elements  are  linked  together,  somewhat  as  words  differ 
though  contaim'ng  common  letters,  or  tunes  while  containing 
conmion  notes.  Within  each  response  the  elements  must  co- 
operate harmoniously;  but  responses  of  the  same  order  are 
frequently  antagonistic  because  they  involve  use  of  some  identical 
elements  in  different  ways.  We  cannot  hunt  a  stamp  in  our  own 
house  and  hunt  another  house  outside  at  the  same  time. 

Through  the  learning  process  as  we  have  so  far  described  it,  the 
agent  acquires  integrated  responses  to  very  complex  and  to  some 
unreal  objects,  —  to  fortune,  fame,  truth,  justice,  as  well  as  to  ice 
cream  and  tobacco.  One  important  class  of  objects  to  which  we 
respond  is  the  motives  of  other  people,  which  we  from  this  present 
study,  have  good  reason  to  know  are  extremely  complicated.  Now 
so  long  as  the  elements  of  the  large  response  (or  wish,  as  the  Freud- 
ians would  call  it)  are  adequately  adjusted  to  the  outer  situation 
—  that  is,  so  long  as  the  man  knows  just  how  to  carry  out  every 
step  in  his  purpose  —  we  have  no  difficulty  in  conceiving  the 
mechanism  of  it.   It  is  a  pure  automatic  habit. 

But  occasionally  the  response  as  a  whole  is  aroused,  on  the 
conditioned  reflex  principles  that  we  have  exhibited,  by  some 
stimulus  associated  with  the  complex  object  of  the  total  response, 
and  yet  some  of  the  smaller  reflexes  are  impeded  by  an  ambiguous 
outer  situation.  The  unstamped  letter  and  images  of  former 
experiences  arouse  a  response  which  is,  as  a  whole,  directed  to- 
ward a  hypothetical  stamp  existing  in  the  agent's  house;  but  on 
going  to  the  usual  receptacle,  no  stamp  is  foimd  there.  The 
traveler,  because  of  various  indications,  believes  he  is  going  to- 
ward a  certain  destination,  but  he  comes  to  the  fork  in  the  road. 
In  this  case  the  man  has  a  purpose  which  he  does  not  know  just 
how  to  realize;  the  situation  has  become  a  problem.^ 

^  The  object  of  a  purpose  may,  evidently,  be  unreal  and '  imaginary.'  There  may 
be  no  stamp  in  the  house,  and  no  such  destination  as  the  traveler  is  seeking.  There 


LEARNING,  REASONING  AND  RATIONALITY  l8l 

And  so,  when  the  minor  constituent  responses  of  the  purpose 
are  impeded  by  the  ambiguous  arrangement  of  external  objects, 
the  neural  impulses  from  the  elements  which  have  been  aroused 
break  over  into  other  possible  subsidiary  reactions,  which  are 
thus  '  tried  out.'  The  higher  or  more  generalized  parts  of  the  re- 
sponse continue  active  because  of  continued  stimulation  from  the 
clues  which  '  mean  '  that  the  object  of  the  purpose  must  exist 
somewhere  (the  unstamped  letter,  for  example),  and  their  energy 
finds  outlet  in  successive  smaller  responses,  such  as  going  from 
nook  to  nook  where  stamps  might  be  concealed,  or  up  one  branch 
of  the  road  looking  for  more  evidence.  These  newly-called  ele- 
ments evidently  are  also  habitual;  one  does  not  try  any  expedient 
about  which  he  knows  nothing  at  all.  They  are  also  '  relevant '  to 
the  purpose,  because  the  higher  parts  of  the  purpose  must  already 
have  some  degree  of  associative  connection  with  them,  in  order 
that  they  may  be  aroused  at  all.  What  sets  the  purpose  at  rest 
and  thus  seals  a  minor  response  as  the  solution  of  the  whole  prob- 
lem, is  the  completed  operation  of  the  whole  response,  including 
perception  of  the  customary  and  expected  results. 

These  hints,  which  are  far  from  an  analysis,  indicate  something 
of  how  the  mechanism  of  the  higher  learning  processes,  called  pur- 
pose and  reasoning,  may  finally  be  worked  out.  The  details  are 
not  of  immediate  importance  for  our  purposes,  but  the  general 
principle  that  rational  activity  is  only  an  instance  of  the  learning 
or  habit-forming  process  is  of  vital  importance,  for  it  clears  up 
most  of  the  dispute  between  '  intellectuaUsm '  and  *  anti-intel- 
lectualism.'  This  general  identity  of  reasoning  and  learning  is 
accepted  by  a  considerable  number  of  the  most  authoritative 
recent  writers  on  rational  processes,  as  our  citations  have  shown, 
and  so  almost  any  of  the  particular  theories  we  have  used  in 
elaborating  it  may  be  overhauled  (such  as  those  relating  to  con- 
may  be  no  possible  perpetual-motion  machine,  though  inventors  are  always  seeking 
it.  Still  the  situation  is  always  definable  though  more  circuitously,  in  terms  of  real 
past  associations  and  real  present  stimuli.  The  trout  which  leaps  at  a  sportsman's 
*  fly '  is  in  a  sense  responding  to  a  live  fly  which  does  not  exist,  but  he  is  incited  by 
real  visual  stimuli  the  like  of  which  he  had  previously  experienced  in  contiguity  with 
real  flies.  This  point  of  unreal  objects  is  much  stressed,  a  little  too  paradoxically, 
by  Professors  Holt  and  Perry. 


1 82  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

sciousness)  without  overthrowing  our  broad  conclusions  as  to  the 
nature  of  the  continuity  between  instinct  and  reason.  As  in  the 
biological  theory  of  heredity  the  obscure  physiological  mecha- 
nisms are  matters  of  warm  dispute  but  the  general  facts  of  heredity 
are  known  beyond  question;  so  here,  the  assimilation  of  rationality 
to  learning  is  more  secure  than  is  knowledge  of  the  minute  phys- 
iological processes  involved. 

It  is  hoped  now  that  the  generalized  conception  of  a  motive, 
given  in  Chapter  I  —  i.  e.,  a  behavior-mechanism  which  makes 
the  subject  prepared  to  act  in  a  certain  way  with  regard  to  a 
certain  object  in  his  environment,  so  that  his  behavior  is  a  (mathe- 
matical) function  of  that  object  —  has  now  been  made  clear. 
Such  mechanisms,  we  have  seen,  seem  to  be  fundamentally  of  the 
same  character,  whether  the  object  be  a  source  of  light  rays  and 
the  behavior  a  swimming  toward  it,  or  the  object  is  a  kingdom  or 
the  love  of  God,  and  the  behavior  a  many-sided  endeavor  to  win 
it.  Each  apparatus  is  composed  of  reflex  elements  which  are 
almost  identical  in  their  method  of  action,  presenting  very  dif- 
ferent practical  problems,  according  as  they  are  iimate  or  ac- 
quired. The  difference  between  motives,  once  they  exist,  is  in  the 
number  of  elements  and  in  the  pattern  of  their  arrangement,  like 
the  difference  between  Paradise  Lost  and  the  latest  popular 
ballad. 

Conflicts  of  Motives  —  Personality 

Now  consider  the  relations  of  the  different  motives  to  each  other 
within  oneself,  within  one  body.  The  total  bundle  of  motives  or 
response-mechanisms  constitutes  the  personality.  As  we  have 
intimated,  a  body  may  develop  antagonistic  motives,  motives 
which  perhaps  get  on  well  enough  when  they  are  aroused  only  at 
different  times,  but  which  are  occasionally  innervated  simul- 
taneously by  a  dilemma  in  the  outward  situation,  and  which  then 
try  to  make  the  agent  do  incompatible  acts.  This  conflict  is 
usually  unpleasant,  because  the  thwarting  of  practically  any 
response  after  it  is  aroused  calls  out  instinctive  rage-reactions. 
We  recognize  this  situation  as  provocative  to  reasoning,  but  often 
no  way  of  satisfying  all  wishes  can,  in  the  nature  of  things,  be  dis- 


LEARNING,  REASONING  AND  RATIONALITY  183 

covered,  and  one  or  all  must  inevitably  be  '  suppressed.'  Doubt- 
less all  the  inclinations  of  no  person  dwell  together  in  perfect 
harmony.   As  James  said 

I  am  often  confronted  by  the  necessity  of  standing  by  one  of  my  empirical 
selves  and  relinquishing  the  rest.  Not  that  I  would  not,  if  I  could,  be  both 
handsome  and  fat  and  well-dressed,  and  a  great  athlete,  and  make  a  million 
a  year,  be  a  wit,  a  hon-vivant,  and  a  lady-killer,  as  well  as  a  philosopher; 
a  philanthropist,  statesman,  warrior,  and  African  explorer,  as  weU  as  a  '  tone- 
poet,'  and  a  saint.  But  the  thing  is  simply  impossible.  The  millionaire's 
work  would  run  counter  to  the  saint's;  the  bon-vivant  and  the  philanthropist 
would  trip  each  other  up;  the  philosopher  and  the  lady-killer  could  not  well 
keep  house  in  the  same  tenement  of  clay.i 

In  most  cases  there  is  a  majority  rule,  and  the  few  wayward 
purposes  are  exiled  by  inhibition,  because  they  are  weaker  than 
the  collective  force  of  the  others,  but  sometimes  when  the  latter 
are  unusually  dormant,  the  wayward  one  is  strong  enough  to  gain 
control  of  the  body.  In  double  personalities,  the  motives  are 
divided  into  rival  camps  which  alternately  gain  possession  of  all 
the  motor  apparatus.  We  recognize  all  these  phenomena  as  the 
*  special  field  '  of  the  Freudian  psychologists. 

The  Freudian  Psychology 

With  a  few  exceptions,  the  Freudians  use  a  terminology  and  set 
of  '  psychical  laws  '  which  are  pecuUar  to  themselves,  having  in 
common  with  other  varieties  of  psychology  only  such  subjective 
concepts  (memory,  association  of  ideas,  pleasure  and  pain,  for 
instance)  as  were  current  in  orthodox  psychology  when  Freud 
started  his  work  in  the  '90's.  Some  members  of  the  school  ex- 
plicitly repudiate  any  attempts  to  connect  physiological  processes 
with  their  concepts  '  complex,'  '  dissociation,'  '  repression,'  '  con- 
flict '  and  the  like.^  Freud  is  more  hospitable  to  evidence  from 
physiology,  but  his  own  suggestions  are  extremely  vague  and 
ambiguous.^  Most  of  his  disciples,  and  the  variant  Jung  school, 
attach  more  mystical  potencies  to  these  introspective  entities 
than  does  the  master,  but  Holt  has  made  a  noteworthy  effort  to 

1  Briefer  Course,  p.  186.  2  g  Hart,  op.  cit.,  p.  17. 

3  See  his  Interpretation  of  Dreams,  e.g.,  pp.  478 ff.  (3d  London  edition  of 
translation,  1915). 


1 84  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

exhibit  the  Freudian  psychology  in  terms  familiar  to  modem 
psychologists  of  the  schools.  His  analysis  of  the  ultimate  nature 
of  motives  is  acceptable  to  his  '  behaviorist '  colleagues,  but  they 
question  with  considerable  reason  whether  he  is  accurately  rep- 
resenting Freud,  as  he  purports  to  be.^  Certainly  there  are  many 
suggestions  in  Freud  which  can  be  substantiated  in  '  behaviorist ' 
terms,  but  there  are  also  many  which  cannot. 

The  doctrine  of  the  subconscious  or  unconscious,  with  its  corol- 
lary of  repression,  comes  near  being  the  heart  of  Freud's  system. 
We  have  his  own  word  for  that.  The  two  '  selves,'  conscious  and 
unconscious,  which  he  believes  every  person  to  possess,  corre- 
spond pretty  closely  to  the  older  psychological  concepts  of  feeling 
and  intellect.  The  self  which  in  the  waking  and  normal  state  has 
control  of  consciousness  is  an  intellectual  person,  having  asso- 
ciated ideas  and  plaiming  circuitous  methods  of  fulfilling  the 
agent's  wants.  The  subconscious  self  is  a  being  of  pure  desire; 
it  is  the  system  of  original  wishes  (sex  and  hunger,  apparently,  to 
Freud;  or  just  one  generalized  '  stream  of  desire  '  or  '  libido  '  to 
many  of  the  school),  and  it  knows  nothing  of  indirection.  It  in- 
sists on  immediate  fulfilment.  Such  wishes  as  are  compatible 
with  the  foreseeing  policy  of  the  intellectual  self  become  matters  of 
consciousness;  such  as  are  not  compatible,  because  of  the  painful 
conflicts  they  bring  about  are  banished  from  consciousness  alto- 
gether. (Freud  assumes  the  inhibiting  power  of  pain  in  all  pos- 
sible connections,  just  as  common-sense  interactionist  psychology 
always  has  done.) 

But  this  banishment  is  not  fatal  to  the  exile.  A  suppressed 
wish,  thinks  Freud,  never  dies.  The  repressed  sexual  desires  of 
nervous  patients  invariably  originate  in  the  first  three  or  four 
years  of  childhood,  according  to  him.  These  exiles  frequently 
disguise  themselves  in  socially  acceptable  ideas  or  in  himiorous 
sallies  and  thus  pass  the  '  censor  '  of  consciousness.  In  sleep  the 
censor  relaxes  vigilance  somewhat  and  less  disguise  ordinarily  is 
required.  In  the  more  trying  circumstances  of  repression,  the 
disguise  assumed  is  some  hallucinatory  bodily  pain  which  had 

1  J.  B.  Watson,  "Does  Holt  Follow  Freud?"  Jour.  Phil.  Psy.,  etc.,  14:  85-92 
(1917)- 


LEARNING,  REASONING  AND  RATIONALITY  1 85 

been  somehow  associated  in  actual  experience  with  the  '  affect ' 
or  desire,  and  here  we  have  the  hysterical  stage  of  the  nervous 
disorders  which  the  psychoanalysts  study.^ 

The  theory  of  the  cure  is  rather  more  obscure  than  that  of  the 
disease,  in  Freud's  writings.  He  finds  that  a  cure  is  always 
effected  after  he  discovers,  by  interpretation  of  dreams  and  of 
free  associations,  the  wish  which  has  been  suppressed,  and  its 
connection  with  the  beginnings  of  the  disorder;  and  then  forces 
the  patient  to  remember  these  matters, — when  he  overcomes  the 
*  psychic  resistance  '  of  the  censor.  Holt  interprets  the  condition 
of  health  as  the  reconciliation  of  all  the  subject's  impulses  or 
wishes,  so  that  each  finds  some  measure  of  expression  and  is  not 
completely  thwarted. 

The  old  theory  of  *  sublimation '  is  much  exploited  by  the 
Freudians,  as  it  is  in  line  with  their  other  doctrines.  According  to 
this  theory,  many  impulses  which  it  would  be  disastrous  to  satisfy 
in  their  original  form  may  be  pacified  by  psychologically  related 
activities  which  are  not  incompatible  with  the  other  wishes,  as  the 
direct  expression  of  the  first  impulses  would  be.  Religion  and  art 
have  long  been  supposed  to  give  scope  in  an  indirect  manner  to  the 
sexual  appetite,  and  we  remember  James'  suggestion  that  in 
athletic  and  similar  peaceful  contests  a  '  moral  equivalent  of  war  ' 
might  be  found,  which  would  drain  off  harmlessly  the  energies  of 
the  pugnacious  instincts  without  damming  them  up.^ 

Evaluation  of  Freudian  Doctrines 

Now  let  us  see  if  anything  can  be  made  of  all  these  doctrines  in 
terms  of  the  more  commonplace  psychology  we  have  been  using. 
In  the  first  place,  the  subconscious  is  not  a  pure  myth.  It  corre- 
sponds in  some  degree  with  the  activities  of  those  neural  mecha- 
nisms which  we  have  already  dealt  with,  firmly  fixed  habits  which 

^  See  Freud's  Selected  Papers  on  Hysteria  and  other  Psychoneuroses,  Brill's 
translation,  N.  Y.,  191 2.  The  papers  were  first  published  from  1895  on.  His  In- 
terpretation of  Dreams  also  contains  many  references  to  his  treatment  and  cure  of 
nervous  diseases. 

2  Freud's  few  vague  observations  on  sublimation  are  in  Three  Contributions  to 
the  Sexual  Theory,  Brill's  translations,  1910,  pp.  38,77,82.  McDougall  thinks  there 
is  something  in  the  theory  and  discusses  it  further  in  a  Supplement  to  his  Social 
Psychology. 


1 86  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

have  come  to  operate  at  times  unconsciously.  Such  mechanisms 
we  believe,  with  Titchener,  make  up  part  of  the  '  determining 
tendencies  '  in  many  if  not  most  of  our  voluntary  actions.  Their 
existence  is  usually  not  suspected,  because  there  is  no  conscious 
report  of  them,  and  so  we  cannot  tell  '  why  '  we  do  things;  but 
what  we  do  is  fully  accounted  for  by  the  history  of  our  own  ner- 
vous system. 

As  to  conflicts  and  repression,  and  transfer  of  '  affects  '  (emo- 
tional reactions)  from  originally  affective  to  originally  indifferent 
objects,  we  have  pretty  well  accounted  for  these  by  our  discussion 
of  the  physiological  correlates  of  emotion  and  affection,  and  by 
the  old-fashioned  principles  of  association  as  slightly  amplified 
by  the  new-fashioned  facts  of  the  conditioned  reflex.  As  Watson 
says,  it  appears  probable  that  the  '  functional '  nervous  diseases 
which  the  Freudians  treat  are  fundamentally  due  to  unadaptive 
habits,  as  would  be  the  case  with  a  'neurasthenic  dog'  that  had 
been  trained  to  reject  meat,  to  wag  his  tail  at  a  harsh  word,  and  to 
make  other  unnatural  responses.^  One  cannot  fail  to  be  struck  by 
the  constant  resort  which  Freud  has  to  association  of  ideas ;  about 
nine-tenths  of  his  writings  are  devoted  to  tracing  these  devious 
connections. 

In  connection  with  the  divination  of  wish-expression  in  dreams, 
in  lapses  of  memory  and  in  slips  of  the  tongue,  also  particularly  in 
the  '  rationalization  '  of  contradictory  principles  by  a  given  per- 
son, we  must  remember  that  any  train  of  thought  or  imagination 
is  in  some  sense  the  acting  out  of  a  series  of  estabHshed  reactions, 
instinctive  and  habitual.  Every  such  established  reaction  is  a 
wish,  and  is  a  strong  one  if  there  are  actual  inner  stimulations  of 
hunger,  sex,  of  other  discomforts  of  various  kinds  arousing  it. 
In  many  circumstances  these  reactions  are  more  easily  carried  out 
in  imaginal  terms  than  in  overt  action;  for  instance  the  cat  in  the 
puzzle-box.  His  saHva  is  flowing  long  before  he  finds  the  solution 

1  "Behavior  and  the  Concept  of  Mental  Disease,"  Jour.  Phil.  Psy.,  etc.,  13:  589- 
597  (191 6).  "The  central  truth  that  I  think  Freud  has  given  us  is  that  youthful, 
outgrown  and  partially  discarded  habit  and  instinctive  systems  of  reaction  can  and 
possibly  always  do  influence  the  functioning  of  our  adult  systems  of  reactions,  and 
influence  to  a  certain  extent  even  the  possibilities  of  our  forming  other  new  habit 
systems  which  we  must  reasonably  be  expected  to  form,"  p.  590. 


LEARNING,  REASONING  AND  RATIONALITY  1 87 

—  he  '  imagines  '  himself  eating  —  the  wish  is  father  to  the 
thought.  And  similarly  with  ourselves,  when  the  external  situa- 
tion baffles  our  reactions,  we  have  to  content  ourselves  with 
dreams  or  imagination,  which  can  often  conveniently  disregard 
the  obstacles.  When  the  wish  involved  is  obscure  or  invisible  to 
consciousness,  as  in  certain  lapses  of  memory  or  sHps  of  the 
tongue,  or  in  rationaHzation,  we  must  suppose  that  it  is  a 
mechanism  whose  explicit  consciousness  has  decayed,  like  the 
mechanism  which  causes  us  to  write  the  wrong  words  sometimes 
on  the  typewriter. 

Our  attitude,  then,  toward  the  Freudian  psychology  is  briefly 
this:  We  believe  that  their  neglect  of  the  minute  neural  mech- 
anisms of  the  mind  will  result  in  many  of  their  sweeping  gen- 
eralizations being  overthrown.  We  doubt  if  their  formulas  of  the 
everlasting  life  of  wishes,  and  of  the  behavior  of  wishes  under 
suppression,  will  hold  of  all  human  motives;  we  think  these  are 
too  hasty  generahzations  from  the  phenomena  of  hunger  and  sex, 
which,  as  we  have  seen,  have  physiological  cycles  that  are  pecul- 
iar to  themselves.  The  other  fundamental  groups  of  instincts, 
such  as  rage,  fear,  striving  for  social  approval,  may  indeed  be  in- 
capable of  permanent  suppression  because  the  external  stimuli 
exciting  them  cannot  be  totally  aboHshed,  but  that  is  a  different 
matter  from  a  gnawing  canker  of  discontent  pent  up  within  the 
subject  himself.  So  far  as  the  stimuli  to  rage  and  fear  can  be  re- 
moved, apparently  these  uistincts  can  be  harmlessly  suppressed; 
and  so  far  as  the  stimuli  to  emulation  or  self-assertion  or  parental 
behavior  can  be  manipulated  by  social  control,  the  behavior  aris- 
ing from  these  instincts  can  be  controlled. 

But  on  the  other  hand,  by  their  going  beyond  mere  introspec- 
tion and  considering  also  the  implications  of  our  gross  behavior, 
the  Freudians  have  thrown  remarkable  light  on  the  unconscious 
determining  tendencies.  In  our  view,  to  be  sure,  these  uncon- 
scious mechanisms  do  not  have  the  canny  and  cunning  intelli- 
gence which  the  Freudians  impute  to  them,  — •  they  are  not  so 
many  Httle  men  inside  the  skuU  of  the  subject.  But  the  Freudian 
researches  have  made  it  impossible  for  other  psychologists  to 
ignore  this  hidden  apparatus;  and  so  they  have  contributed  sub- 


1 88  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

stantially  to  the  conclusion  that  the  human  reason  is  wholly  a 
matter  of  instincts  and  habits  (or  associations),  and  therefore  is 
often  led  astray  from  the  truth  by  passion  or  by  incomplete  asso- 
ciations, such  as  those  which  land  the  mouse  in  the  trap,  the  trout 
on  the  hook. 

Are  Instincts  the  Prime  Movers? 

If  we  raise  the  question  now  whether  McDougall  is  correct  in 
saying  that  the  instincts  are  the  prime  movers  to  action,  our 
answer  will  summarize  pretty  well  the  whole  foregoing  psy- 
chological discussion.   His  view  is 

By  the  conative  or  impulsive  force  of  some  instinct  (or  of  some  habit  de- 
rived from  an  instinct),  every  train  of  thought,  however  cold  and  passionless 
it  may  seem,  is  borne  along  towards  its  end,  and  every  bodily  activity  is 
initiated  and  sustained.  The  instinctive  impulses  determine  the  ends  of  aU 
activities  and  supply  the  driving  power  by  which  all  mental  activities  are 
sustained;  and  all  the  complex  intellectual  apparatus  of  the  most  highly  de- 
veloped mind  is  but  a  means  toward  these  ends,  is  but  the  instrument  by 
which  these  impulses  seek  their  satisfaction,  whUe  pleasure  and  pain  do  but 
serve  to  guide  them  in  their  choice  of  means.^ 

If  these  impulses  were  removed,  he  adds,  the  body  would  be  like 
a  steam  engine  whose  fires  had  been  drawn. 

That  qualification  "or  of  some  habit  derived  from  an  instinct" 
may  constitute  a  *  joker  '  in  his  thesis.  Woodworth  asserts  that 
the  chief  object  of  his  own  book  is  to  controvert  McDougall  on 
this  head,  by  showing  that  "Any  [response]  mechanism  —  except 
perhaps  some  of  the  most  rudimentary  that  give  the  simple  re- 
flexes —  once  it  is  aroused,  is  capable  of  furnishing  its  own  drive 
and  also  of  lending  drive  to  the  connected  mechanisms."  ^  This 
proposition  evidently  is  in  line  with  our  guess  at  the  apparatus  of 
the  determining  tendency  or  purpose,  in  reasoning,  which  we  have 
developed  above.  Woodworth  then  shows  that  it  is  necessary  to 
distinguish  between  the  motive  which  leads  a  person  originally  to 
take  up  a  new  activity,  and  the  motive  which  sustains  him  in  that 
activity  after  he  has  become  '  interested  in  it  for  its  own  sake.' 
The  child  can  be  induced  to  take  up  certain  studies  at  school  by 
appeals  to  his  self-feehng,  including  rivalry  with  other  children 

^  Social  Psychology,  p.  44.  ^  Op.  cit.,  p.  67. 


LEARNING,  REASONING  AND  RATIONALITY  1 89 

and  by  excitation  of  his  curiosity  or  explorative  tendencies.  And 
the  young  man  chooses  an  occupation  considerably  with  a  view  to 
the  remuneration  attainable,  which  will  afford  creature  comforts 
and  other  instinctive  satisfactions;  partially  also  with  a  view  to 
the  social  consideration  he  will  enjoy. 

But  invariably  some  of  the  people  thus  lured  into  such  tasks 
become  absorbed  in  the  subject-matter  of  the  tasks;  one  keeps 
exploring  its  possibilities  with  increasing  zest,  and  forgets  the 
ulterior  impulses  which  induced  him  to  enter  upon  it  in  the  first 
place;  while  other  individuals  either  drop  the  task  altogether, 
satisfying  their  original  drives  by  saying  that  it  is  below  their 
gifts,  or  else  they  have  constantly  to  remind  themselves  of  the 
extraneous  inducements,  to  watch  the  clock  and  think  of  pay  day. 
Even  in  the  latter  case,  it  is  true,  '  quitting-time  '  and  pay  day 
mean  not  merely  the  satisfaction  of  original  instincts  and  appe- 
tites, they  mean  also  opportunity  for  absorption  in  some  acquired 
activities  which  have  become  interesting  for  their  own  sakes,  such 
as  following  baseball  scores  or  playing  a  fiddle  in  solitude.  The 
facts  that  everyone's  attention  is  strongly  concentrated  from 
time  to  time  on  the  mere  activity  he  has  come  to  love,  and  that 
the  intrusion  of  self -consciousness,  of  thoughts  as  to  whether  he  is 
making  a  good  appearance,  will  only  spoil  his  work,  are  taken  by 
Woodworth  to  prove  that  McDougall's  picture  of  the  actual  mo- 
tives of  men  is  a  distorted  one,  and  that  an  acquired  drive  moves 
us  by  its  own  power  (pp.  67-75).  He  points  to  McDougall's 
recognition  that  an  act  originally  undertaken  as  means  to  an  end 
sometimes  becomes  an  end  in  itself.  ''Nothing  is  commoner," 
says  McDougall,  "than  that  the  earning  of  money,  at  first  under- 
taken purely  as  a  means  to  an  end,  becomes  an  end  in  itself."  ^ 
We  have  met  this  idea  several  times  in  Hartley  and  the  Mills;  we 
would  hardly  expect  to  find  it  in  McDougall. 

Reconciliation  of  Associationists  and  Functionalists 

Our  opinion,  however,  is  that  the  associationists,  McDougall 
and  Woodworth  are  all  largely  in  the  right.  As  we  have  seen,  the 
most  plausible  physiological  theory  is  that  pleasure  and  pain  (or 

1  op.  cit.,  p.  349. 


190  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

unpleasantness),  as  well  as  the  emotions,  are  correlated  with  in- 
stinctive reactions,  which  are  reactions  that  include  inner  bodily- 
changes  lending  vigor  to  the  whole  body.  The  subjective  feelings 
of  comfort  and  discomfort,  pleasantness  and  unpleasantness, 
whether  emotional  or  not,  appear  to  be  invariably  attached  to 
definite  instinctive  response-complexes. 

We  know  further  that  instinctive  responses  can  be  attached  to 
learned  responses  or  stimuli,  upon  the  conditioned  reflex  prin- 
ciples, which  correspond  very  closely  to  the  old  laws  of  association. 
In  this  way  one  learns  what  are  the  pleasant  and  unpleasant 
things  of  his  particular  world,  and  he  comes  to  like  and  hate  all 
manner  of  things  which  had  no  instinctive  interest  to  him,  or  even 
have  no  causal  relation  to  the  satisfaction  of  his  instincts. 

This  learning  process  continues  throughout  life,  so  that  the 
inner  reactions  which  give  pleasure  or  unpleasant  feelings  are 
constantly  being  shifted  from  one  attachment  to  another.  What 
we  loved  yesterday,  we  hate  or  are  indifferent  to  today;  what  we 
hate  today  we  may  love  tomorrow.  It  has  been  seen,  furthermore, 
that  many  connecting  links  or  reflexes  in  these  response-chains 
become  unconscious  as  they  become  firmly  habitual,  like  many  of 
our  motions  in  walking  or  writing,  so  that  the  course  of  the  asso- 
ciation is  not  discernible,  —  it  plays  no  part  in  consciousness.  If 
the  steps  by  which  these  common  habits  are  built  up  were  less 
obvious  we  should  hear  a  great  deal  about  writing  and  piano- 
playing  instincts. 

In  the  extreme  example  of  the  miser  who  seeks  money  for  its 
own  sake,  McDougall  is  largely  right  in  saying  that  the  instinctive 
reactions  of  pleasant  feeling,  which  have  become  transferred  to 
the  habits  of  making  money,  are  driving  the  man  on.  But  the 
associationists  were  right  too,  in  saying  that  it  is  a  case  of  fre- 
quent associations  of  money  with  pleasure,  and  that  the  original 
connecting  ideas  have  disappeared  from  consciousness  but  were 
once  there.  As  John  Mill  remarked,  no  one  considers  the  desire 
for  money  to  be  '  intuitive  '  or  instinctive,  and  yet  to  introspec- 
tion it  becomes  just  as  much  of  a  good  in  its  own  right  as  the 
'  moral  sense,'  and  other  alleged  intuitions.   And  Woodworth  is  | 

correct  also,  in  saying  that  the  man's  interest  and  attention  is  now 


LEARNING,  REASONING  AND  RATIONALITY  191 

wholly  absorbed  in  his  money,  for  the  acquired  mechanisms  loom 
larger  in  the  total  response  than  the  instincts  which  led  him 
originally  to  enter  the  commercial  game,  or  the  innate  feeling- 
mechanisms  which  still  shed  the  pleasant  feeling  around  his  gold. 

People's  absorption  in  various  occupations  may  be  traced,  we 
believe,  to  three  factors,  in  varying  proportions:  (i)  the  innate 
general  bias  or  ability  for  a  particular  activity,  (2)  the  many 
learned  reflexes  involved  in  its  execution,  and  (3)  the  instinctive 
complex  of  feeling-reactions  which  has  been  gradually  trans- 
ferred to  the  response  that  is,  as  a  whole,  focused  on  '  the  work.' 
The  habitual  mechanisms,  that  is,  probably  never  operate  in  soH- 
tude,  they  are  part  of  total  responses  which  include  various  in- 
stinctive elements  that  give  affective  consciousness,  and  possibly 
some  instinctive  elements  which  are  non-affective.  Every  activity 
which  is  '  interesting  for  its  own  sake  '  undoubtedly  does  involve 
a  number  of  instinctive  neural  circuits,  such  as  those  connected 
with  manipulation  and  '  curiosity,'  and  those  stimulating  to 
exercise  all  the  acquired  response-systems  (for  instance,  mathe- 
matical habits) ;  and  the  interesting  activity  involves  moreover  a 
fringe  of  affective  inner  response,  acquired  through  manifold 
associations  of  this  'work'  with  human  approval,  with  domina- 
tion, with  the  attractive  possibilities  of  money,  and  so  on.  This 
fringe  of  inner  reactions  gives  no  clear  consciousness  while  one  is 
absorbed  in  his  work,  but  it  nevertheless  contributes  its  vague 
aura  to  the  feeling-tone  of  '  interest.'  ^ 

The  stock  criticism  of  '  associationist  intellectualism  '  —  that 
the  associationists  supposed  the  whole  chain  of  ideas  which  lead 
from  a  past  pleasure  to  a  contemplated  action  always  to  pass 
through  the  mind  of  the  agent  in  determining  his  choice  —  is 
therefore  of  little  weight.^   Hartley,  the  Mills,  Bain,  all  of  them 

"•  Notice  the  statement  of  Herrick  in  his  summary  of  pleasure-pain:  "  In  the  nor- 
mal man  these  mechanisms  may  function  with  a  minimum  of  cortical  [conscious] 
control;  giving  the  general  feeling- tone  of  well-being  or  malaise,  ..."     Loc.  cit. 

2  McDougaU's  discussion  of  learning  in  relation  to  instincts  (Ch.  II)  indicates 
that  '  association  '  to  him  means  that  all  the  original  sensations  must  be  imagina- 
tively reproduced.  WaUas  frequently  repudiates  the  associationist '  intellectualism  ' 
in  the  same  fashion,  e.  g.,  "We  have  learnt  that  if  we  see  a  man  run  away  or  burst 
into  tears,  we  are  not  bound  to  infer  that  he  does  so  because  his  reason  has  selected 
that  action  for  him  as  the  best  way  of  securing  pleasure  or  avoiding  pain."  —  Great 
Society,  p.  38. 


192  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

emphasized  repeatedly  that  men  are  often  not  conscious  at  the 
time  of  action  of  all  the  associations  which  have  led  them  to  desire 
particular  objects,  because  the  linking  *  ideas '  are  continually 
being  dropped.  It  was  the  power  of  association  of  experiences 
which  they  kept  steadily  in  mind,  and  which  gave  them  and  us 
one  of  the  most  important  clues  to  methods  of  education  and 
social  control.  It  is  also  futile  to  represent  them  as  saying  that 
one  laughs  or  cries  for  the  sake  of  the  calculated  pleasure;  they 
allowed  for  such  instinctive  reflexes,  and  expressly  limited  their 
pleasure-pain  theory  to  voluntary  actions.  Mirth  is  a  *  simple 
pleasure,'  which  is  transferred  to  a  variety  of  objects.  The  objects 
of  mirth  (or  grief)  are  the  subject  of  rational  calculations  in  every- 
one, as  is  evidenced  by  the  large  business  of  purveying  amuse- 
ments. And  the  objection  that  it  is  the  instincts,  rather  than 
pleasure-pain,  which  determine  our  so-called  voluntary  action, 
when  we  find  that  instinct  and  affection  are  most  likely  but  two 
views  of  the  same  thing,  becomes  like  saying  it  is  health,  not  the 
body,  which  is  improved  by  exercise,  or  that  lads  get  on  in  the 
world,  not  by  algebra  but  by  hard  work.  It  is  the  fallacy  of  dif- 
ferent planes.^ 

The  Moeal  Will 

But  still  we  have  not  joined  issue  squarely  with  the  anti-intel- 
lectualist  position  represented  by  McDougall  on  the  subject  of 
normal  human  rationahty.  As  we  have  seen,  he  contends  that  the 
instincts  are  behind  every  impulse  and  thought;  and  such  appar- 
ently must  be  the  case  on  his  theory,  in  all  actions,  whether  reason 
has  had  anything  to  do  with  them  or  not.  How  then  can  he  find 
an  opposition  between  instinct  and  reason?  What  is  '  reason '  to 
him?   He  objects  to  the  old  associationist  idea  that  reasonable 

1  Wallas  uses  the  parallel  about  algebra  and  work  to  protest  against  the  opposi- 
tion between  instinct  and  reason  set  up  by  the  anti-intellectualists,  such  as  Mc- 
Dougall, Ribot,  L.  Stephen  (Great  Society,  p.  39).  Wallas  realizes  that  there  is  no 
opposition  between  reason  and  habits  and  instincts,  but  his  account  of  the  relations 
among  them  is  quite  unsatisfactory.  He  says,  for  example,  "  Since  .  .  .  Thought  is 
a  true  Disposition,  it,  Uke  all  other  dispositions,  has  not  only  its  appropriate  group  of 
stimuli  and  its  appropriate  course  of  action,  but  also  its  appropriate  emotion,"  — 
Great  Society,  Ch.  X,  p.  231.  He  considers  reason  to  be  just  one  among  the  in- 
stincts, instead  of  an  organization  of  instincts  and  habits. 


LEARNING,  REASONING  AND  RATIONALITY  193 

action  is  normal  in  men,  the  truth  being,  to  his  mind,  that  "men 
are  only  a  little  bit  reasonable,  and  are  frequently  moved  to  act  in 
most  irrational  ways."   What  does  he  mean  by  "irrational"? 

He  is  thinking  of  a  special  case  of  reasoning,  which  we  have  not 
discussed,  namely,  deUberation  over  a  proposed  course  of  action, 
when  the  question  we  put  to  ourselves  is  not  how  can  our  purpose 
be  carried  out,  but  which  purpose  or  impulse  shall  be  allowed 
to  prevail?  In  this  very  common  situation,  which  varies  from 
trivial  decisions  to  great  moral  contests,  we  say  in  introspective 
terms  that  we  '  turn  the  matter  over  in  our  mind,'  that  is,  we 
think  through  all  the  implications  which  occur  to  us  of  each  of  the 
proposed  courses.  We  try  to  realize  as  fully  as  possible  all  that  it 
means  to  do  this,  and  all  it  involves  to  do  that,  in  the  hope  that  a 
decided  surplus  in  motive  power  will  appear  on  one  side  and  so 
lead  to  volition  in  that  direction.  Bentham  would  say  that  we 
sum  up  the  pleasures  and  pains,  and  automatically  choose  the 
course  representing  the  greatest  net  pleasure;  while  his  opponents 
point  out  that  action  is  often  '  in  the  line  of  greatest  resistance,' 
or  toward  the  greater  unpleasantness. 

This  case,  which  seems  very  unlike  the  typical  reasoning  situa- 
tion we  have  been  analyzing,  is  really  of  the  same  nature.  Each  of 
the  conflicting  purposes  (habitual  or  instinctive)  would  act  itself 
out  if  it  were  not  inhibited  by  the  other  purposes  trying  to  make 
use  of  the  body  in  other  ways.  That  constitutes  the  ambiguity, 
the  dilemma.  Deliberation  signifies  that  each  purpose  remains 
sufficiently  active  to  check  the  others  from  getting  over  into  overt 
action,  while  each  alternately  obtains  use  of  the  motor  apparatus 
on  the  imaginal  level,  thereby  acting  itself  out  in  ideas,  exploring 
the  consequences  which  the  act  would  have  so  far  as  the  associa- 
tions (memory)  of  the  agent  permit. 

The  ideas  of  these  consequences,  moreover,  arouse  in  idea  still 
other  responses  associated  with  them;  that  is  where  the  utilitarian 
idea  of  calculating  pleasures  comes  in.  I  debate  with  myself 
whether  to  go  home  for  lunch  or  to  a  restaurant;  and  as  I '  men- 
tally explore  '  the  consequences  or  implications  of  my  going  home, 
I  recall  the  apple  pie  in  the  pantry,  whereupon  my  strong  apple- 
pie- seeking  response  joins  its  energy  to  the  others  which  are  trying 


194  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

to  take  me  home.  But  instead  of  a  response  correlated  with  pleas- 
ure, a  determining  tendency  which  has  pretty  well  lost  its  pleas- 
urable correlate  may  be  aroused.  If  I  am  contemplating  taking 
a  drink  of  liquor,  there  may  be  infinitely  more  alluring  visions  on 
the  side  of  drinking,  and  yet  a  deep-laid  complex  of  habits  and 
instincts  which  I  call '  principle  '  may  determine  me  not  to,  just  as 
the  shy  man's  habits  of  courtesy  in  James'  illustration,  take  him 
to  the  social  gathering  which  he  dreads.  In  these  latter  cases  the 
'  sum  of  pleasure '  explanation  is  inaccurate,  yet  the  associationist 
explanation  is  not  far  from  right,  for  these  obscure  determiners 
are  likely  to  be  much  more  largely  habitual  than  instinctive.^ 

This  process  of  mental  exploration  of  consequences,  it  is  easily 
seen,  is  on  a  par  with  the  testing  process  in  abstract  reasoning. 
In  either  case  it  is  an  adjustment  between  the  subject's  own  re- 
sponses which  is  sought ;  the  difference  between  the  two  classes  of 
problem  is  chiefly  in  the  nature  of  the  impulses  or  purposes  which 
give  the  '  drive  '  to  the  deliberation. 

So  that  McDougall  means  by  irrational  action,  not  behavior 
preceded  by  no  reasoning  at  all,  but  action  taken  without  full 
consideration  of  all  the  consequences.  He  means  rash  and  im- 
prudent behavior  prompted  by  over-powering  instincts.  But 
where  does  reasonable  or  rational  action  begin,  in  his  view?  How 
many  of  the  possible  consequences  must  be  reckoned  with  in  ad- 
vance before  one  can  be  said  to  take  the  plimge  '  rationally  '?  Is 
rationality  the  same  as  omniscience?  As  H.  R.  Marshall  replied  to 
Sidgwick  concerning  Aristotle's  old  problem,  we  may  be  sure  that 
no  man  considers  his  action  unreasonable  at  the  time  of  decision; 
it  is  only  in  the  Ught  of  his  purposes  as  they  appear  to  his  con- 
sciousness afterward,  that  he  judges  he  has  acted  irrationally .^ 

^  Titchener's  dictum,  corroborated  in  different  ways  by  the  '  behaviorists  '  and 
Freudians,  is:  "It  is  always  the  strongest  impulse  that  wins;  though  here,  as  also  in  the 
case  of  attention,  it  is  not  necessarily  the  impulse  that  looks  the  strongest  to  psy- 
chological observation;  there  may  be  a  more  impressive  array  of  ideas  on  the  side 
that  finally  gives  way.  The  winning  impulse,  as  we  see  in  historical  examples  of 
selective  action,  is  that  which  has  the  strongest  backing  of  nerve-forces."  —  Be- 
ginner's Psychology,  p.  248. 

2  Mind,  January,  1894.  Restated  in  Instinct  and  Reason  (1898),  Ch.  XVI,  sec.  4. 
Sidgwick's  article  on  "  Unreasonable  Action,"  which  McDougall  takes  as  a  point  of 
departure,  was  in  Mind,  April,  1893. 


LEARNING,  REASONING  AND  RATIONALITY  195 

We  have  seen  no  evidence  that  the  associationists  regarded 
human  beings  as  infallible  calculators  of  all  consequences  of  their 
actions,  and  so  we  take  their  '  intellectualism  '  to  mean  that 
people  often  do  reflect  somewhat  on  how  their  acts  will  affect  their 
various  purposes  (which  are  in  some  sense  pleasures),  and  par-- 
ticularly  that  people  can  be  made  to  reflect  more  carefully  by 
timely  warnings  and  signboards.^  This  amount  of  '  intellectual- 
ism '  and  '  assumption  of  human  rationality  '  is  verified  not  only 
by  every-day  experience  but  by  the  best  psychological  evidence 
we  have  been  able  to  secure.  When  we  do  consider  consequences, 
the  fact  that  our  reasonings  are  based  only  on  associations  makes 
them  frequently  fallacious,  as  is  the  '  assumption  '  of  the  chicken 
that  he  will  always  be  fed. 

^  We  have  been  speaking  of  the  theoretical  psychologists  among  the  associa- 
tionists, who  are  usually  included  in  the  anti-intellectualist  condemnation.  To  what 
extent  Bentham  and  other  popularizers  of  psychological  hedonism  preverted  it  with 
distressing  social  consequences  (especially  by  means  of  the  political  economy  of  the 
newspapers  and  business  men  of  the  early  and  middle  nineteenth  century)  is  another 
question. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

HOW  MAY  NEW  MOTIVES  BE  INSTILLED? 

Primitive  Wants  Soon  Outgrown 

It  is  but  a  step  now  to  the  vastly  important  subject  which  we  have 
deferred :  the  methods  by  which  effective  new  motives  (or  '  senti- 
ments,' to  use  Shand's  term)  may  be  built  up  in  human  beings, 
and  the  possible  range  within  which  they  can  be  made  effective. 
We  have  little  to  offer  as  yet  which  is  beyond  the  common  prop- 
erty of  moral  reformers,  yet  a  restatement  of  the  psychological 
principles  involved  may  be  useful. 

The  notion  which  some  people  have  derived  in  a  roundabout 
way  from  the  associationist  psychology  —  that  before  each  action 
every  man  hastily  calculates  the  net  advantage  to  be  gained  with 
reference  to  his  original  and  primitive  pleasures  or  utilities  (mean- 
ing principally  his  own  bodily  satisfactions  or  pains,  and  the  per- 
sonal esteem  in  which  he  will  be  held)  —  is,  of  course,  false.  The 
ends  which  are  considered  by  men  to  be  good  in  themselves,  with 
reference  to  which  they  do  some  calculating  and  make  small  or 
great  sacrifices,  are  not  fixed  or  uniform.  They  are  as  various  as 
the  objects  to  which  the  instincts  (including  emotions  and  feel- 
ings) and  habits  can  be  transferred  by  association.  We  come  into 
the  world  all  with  very  similar  '  utihties  '  or  '  pleasures,'  as  the 
associationists  knew,  but  because  of  our  differing  hereditary 
biases  of  '  interest '  and  because  of  the  variety  of  our  associations 
in  life,  our  utilities  or  ideals  or  motives  (these  all  amoimt  to  the 
same  thing,  so  far  as  the  effect  on  action  is  concerned)  come  to 
differ  enormously  from  person  to  person  and  within  one  person 
from  time  to  time.  The  conscious  records  of  these  transfers  or 
associations  frequently  disappear,  and  then  we  can  give  no  ra- 
tional account  of  why  we  want  to  tell  the  truth  or  to  tell  lies  or 
attain  other  final  objectives,  we  shall  have  to  say  if  pressed  "Be- 
cause that's  the  kind  of  man  I  am."  We  want  them  just  for  their 
own  sake.  Hence  it  is  a  supreme  blunder  to  suppose  that  men  in 

196 


HOW  MAY  NEW  MOTIVES  BE  INSTILLED?  197 

general  are,  or  necessarily  always  will  be,  appealed  to  chiefly 
through  their  primitive  wants;  and  it  is  equally  erroneous  to  sup- 
pose that  instincts  must  be  assumed  to  account  for  all  the  broadly 
similar  lines  of  human  activity. 

The  instinct  and  appetite  groups  do  leave  their  marks  on  our 
sophisticated  motives,  it  is  true,  and  knowledge  of  the  instincts 
does  help  us  to  appeal  to  the  most  powerful  impulses.  We  learn 
to  satisfy  our  hunger  and  to  deal  with  our  sex  appetite  in  certain 
individual  ways,  and  other  methods  of  satisfaction  become  often 
impossible  to  us.  We  are  all  moved  by  the  desire  for  approbation, 
but  we  have  different  standards  of  approval,  —  to  some  players, 
as  Hamlet  said,  the  censure  of  one  good  judge  must  outweigh  the 
applause  of  a  whole  theatreful  of  others.  We  develop  idiosyn- 
crasies of  fearing  and  hating,  and  so  on.  Consequently  a  stimulus 
which  will  arouse  a  response  built  upon  a  certain  instinct-group  in 
one  person  will  not  arouse  the  corresponding  instinct-group  in 
another.  But  there  remain  similarities  enough  within  these 
classes  of  mature  motives  so  that  food  purveyors  can  make  effec- 
tive appeals  to  a  generalized  appetite,  promoters  of  county  his- 
tories can  find  plenty  of  subscribers  by  flattering  the  numerous 
*  leading  citizens,'  authors  can  exploit  the  sex  interest  by  best- 
seller novels,  and  politicians  can  play  on  the  sympathy  and  hate  of 
their  audiences.  There  seems  to  be  promise  that  social  science  will 
develop  sound  generalizations  of  more  and  more  scope,  as  psy- 
chological evidence  in  its  multitude  of  forms  accumulates. 

Emotional  Drives  to  Establish  Necessary  Habits 

Such  evidence  will  help  us  not  only  in  dealing  with  men  as  we 
find  them,  but  in  training  the  rising  generations  to  better  and 
better  social  adaptation.  Watson  and  Morgan  suggest,  in  the  con- 
clusion of  their  report  on  emotional  reactions  in  infants,  that  the 
possibility  of  transfer  of  affective  responses  to  indifferent  objects 
by  association,  on  conditioned  reflex  principles,  points  to  the  use 
of  emotional  drives  to  establish  prosaic  but  necessary  habits.^ 
Interest  or  added  energy  can  be  drawn  from  emotional  reservoirs 
in  school,  not  only  by  methods  of  presenting  the  material,  but  by 

^  Op.  cit.,  pp.  172-174. 


198  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

the  teacher's  personality.  Fear  of  discharge,  rage  at  ridicule,  ap- 
peals to  loyalty  are  similar  devices  long  ago  hit  upon  by  practical 
men  in  the  industrial  world;  and  the  money  reward,  by  the  feel- 
ings which  have  been  transferred  to  it  from  all  manner  of  pleasant 
experiences  that  it  has  secured,  imparts  zest  to  the  task  upon 
which  receipt  of  money  depends. 

We  have  not  said  anything  so  far  about  conscience  or  religious 
fervor,  but  clearly  in  the  view  of  our  commonplace  psychology, 
these  forces  are  strongly  emotional  and  are  largely  built  up  by 
experience.  There  may  well  be  some  specific  instinctive  roots, 
such  as  kindliness  or  sympathy,  fear  or  awe  at  the  world  at  large 
and  at  supernatural  rewards  or  punishments;  but  the  particular 
things  which  these  motives  prompt  people  to  do  are  only  ex- 
plicable, as  John  Mill  explained  them,  by  long,  pervasive  training. 
Emotions  of  fear  and  love  have  been  transferred  into  these  com- 
plexes, and  particularly  is  the  desire  of  approval  and  dread  of 
disapproval  to  be  discerned.  We  know  what  supreme  power  the 
religious  and  moral  conscience  has  wielded  over  men  in  all  ages,  in 
the  various  forms  of  fanaticism,  devoutness,  class  or  professional 
standards  (noblesse  oblige,  for  instance),  down  to  our  least  pre- 
tentious '  principles  ';  and  so  this  old  form  of  social  control  can  be 
elaborated  in  the  future  in  the  service  of  new  ideals. 

Reiterated  and  manifold  associations  of  the  ideal  object  with 
our  elemental  and  normally-acquired  motives,  are  the  chief  fac- 
tors in  the  conscience  and  religion-building  process.  Most  of  us 
have  now  a  prejudice  in  favor  of  truth,  and  so  we  consider  that 
these  associations  to  be  preached  in  the  future  should  be  true 
causal  ones,  —  in  other  words,  we  think  that  in  the  long  rim  the 
truth  will  make  men  free,  and  also  harmonious  with  each  other. 
But  if  it  should  prove  that  over  and  above  knowledge,  good-will 
must  be  inculcated  for  the  sake  of  the  general  welfare,  the  wise 
moral  leader  will  be  able  to  promote  enthusiasm  for  the  new  and 
artificial  ideals  by  associations  of  contiguity  and  similarity  with 
the  more  primitive  objects  of  emotion,  when  there  is  no  necessary 
causal  relation  between  the  two. 

The  person  who  wishes  to  advance  the  cause  of  humanity,  in 
other  words,  has  two  possible  lines  of  action,  both  made  possible 


HOW  MAY  NEW  MOTIVES  BE  INSTILLED?  199 

by  the  psychological  principles  of  learning  or  association  which  we 
have  been  surveying.  He  may  utilize  our  learning  capacity,  and 
his  own,  to  teach  us  how  more  economically  to  realize  our  present 
wants,  —  this  is  the  purely  intellectual  effect  of  knowledge.  We 
can  be  depended  on  to  adopt  any  short-cut  methods  which  are 
pointed  out  to  us  for  the  satisfaction  of  our  existing  desires.  He 
may,  on  the  other  hand,  utilize  our  learning  mechanisms  to  create 
new  wants  in  us,  wants  which  will  make  us  more  harmonious  with 
each  other  and  with  nature,  by  associating  new  (and  '  better  ') 
ideals  with  our  old  wants,  particularly  with  our  emotional  inter- 
ests. Mr.  Hoover's  education  of  our  conscience  in  regard  to  food 
conservation  was  along  both  lines;  he  showed  us  how  we  could 
help  win  the  war,  which  we  already  wanted  to  do ;  and  by  means 
of  stories  of  the  suffering  across  the  sea,  he  made  our  want  to  save 
food  still  stronger.  The  story  of  how  much  we  owe  to  the  sufferings 
of  noble  men  of  long  ago,  for  example,  always  stirs  us  to  do  some- 
thing for  the  general  welfare,  even  though  it  is  quite  possible  for 
us  to  take  the  benefits  which  have  been  handed  down  to  us  with- 
out bestirring  ourselves  to  help  the  society  of  the  future. 

The  words  of  two  wise  masters  will  show  how  well  these  prin- 
ciples have  been  understood  in  both  modern  and  ancient  times. 
William  James  counseled  school  teachers, 

Since  some  objects  are  natively  interesting  and  in  others  interest  is  arti- 
ficially acquired,  the  teacher  must  know  which  the  natively  interesting  ones 
are;  for  .  .  .  other  objects  can  artificially  acquire  an  interest  only  through 
first  becoming  associated  with  some  of  these  natively  interesting  things.  .  .  . 
The  two  associated  objects  grow,  as  it  were,  together:  the  interesting  portion  sheds 
its  quality  over  the  whole;  and  thus  things  not  interesting  in  their  own  right  bor- 
row an  interest  which  becomes  as  real  and  as  strong  as  that  of  any  natively  inter- 
esting thing} 

And  it  was  Pythagoras  —  was  it  not?  —  who  said:  "  Choose  that 
course  which  is  most  excellent,  and  custom  will  render  it  most 
delightful."  Plato,  too,  was  much  concerned  with  elimination  of 
the  anecdotes  attributing  immoral  acts  to  gods  and  heroes  from 
the  epics  of  Homer,  before  these  should  be  told  to  the  young.  ''  It 
is  most  important,"  he  said,  "that  the  tales  which  the  young  first 
hear  should  be  models  of  virtuous  thoughts."  ^ 

1  Talks  to  Teachers  (1899),  pp.  91,  94.  ^  Republic,  Bk.  II. 


200  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

The  effectiveness  of  such  short-cut  emotional  appeals,  of  asso- 
ciations which  arouse  new  interests  rather  than  show  logically  how 
to  satisfy  old  ones,  is  well  known  to  advertisers  and  to  many 
other  masters  of  practical  art  (to  the  astonishment  of  many  ob- 
servers '  that  people  can  be  so  illogical ') . 

The  rational  moralist  tries  hard  to  believe  that  "Knowledge  is 
Virtue,"  — •  i.  e.,  that  our  existing  wants  would  be  harmonious  if 
we  only  had  sufficient  knowledge;  but  if  he  finds  himself  in  doubt 
on  that  head  he  often  frankly  counsels  the  propagation  of  socially 
useful  illusions.^  But  we  believe  the  above-stated  psychological 
principles  point  toward  a  better  bridge  between  egoism  and  uni- 
versalism,  not  through  illusion  but  through  the  development  of 
'  sentiments  '  or  new  motives  for  old.  In  this  there  need  be  no 
deception  and  so  no  possibility  of  disillusionment.  If  we  had  to 
regard  the  existing  human  wants,  or  the  wants  which  have  existed 
in  the  past,  as  immutable,  then  fiction-making  and  the  mailed  fist 
of  the  state  would  doubtless  be  the  only  alternatives  to  that  war- 
fare of  each  against  all  over  which  Hobbes  shuddered. 

Natural  Limits  to  Perfectibility 

There  are,  of  course,  natural  limits  to  the  educability  of 
motives,  and  they  set  bounds  to  reforms  in  wants,  whether  by 
preacher,  legislator  or  advertiser.  (There  are  also  limits,  undoubt- 
edly, to  the  human  abiHty  to  acquire  knowledge,  though  our  race 
may  indefinitely  advance  in  it.)  What  these  limitations  are  is  an 
uncertain  matter. 

There  are,  in  the  first  place,  certain  external  conditions  to 
which  we  must  conform,  or  our  social  group  will  perish.  Professor 
Carver  has  developed  this  point  clearly.  To  use  one  of  his  illus- 
trations, the  Moslems  have  instilled  into  their  people  an  aversion 
to  pork;  that  is  an  artificial  ideal  which  does  effectively  control 
their  conduct.  It  is  only  one  of  thousands,  which  are  just  as  effec- 
tive, throughout  the  human  family.  But  scientific  experiments 
show  that  the  hog  is  a  much  more  economical  converter  of  plant 
substances  into  concentrated  human  food  than  is  any  other  beast, 
and  so  pork-eating  groups  have  an  advantage  over  the  Moslems  in 

^  E.  A.  Ross,  Social  Control;  B.  Kidd,  Social  Evolution. 


HOW  MAY  NEW  MOTIVES  BE  INSTILLED?  20I 

the  competition  for  survival.  Similarly  as  to  the  general  organiza- 
tion of  individual  motives  which  we  call  altruism;  apart  from  the 
question  how  far  it  can  possibly  be  made  efifective  over  most 
people,  there  is  the  question  of  how  a  given  degree  of  self-prefer- 
ence will  work  with  reference  to  the  situation  of  man  in  nature. 

In  the  second  place,  our  common  instinctive  and  other  phys- 
iological endowments  set  limits  to  the  refashioning  of  our  wants. 
We  cannot  learn  not  to  want  food,  nor  to  hate  our  children.  Can 
we  learn  to  love  our  enemies?  But  there  have  existed  a  great 
variety  of  ways  of  satisfying  these  stubborn  wants  through  his- 
torical times.  The  Spartan  methods  of  loving  children  were  what 
we  might  use  if  we  could  hate  them.  The  urgent  sexual  wants 
have  been  repressed  effectively  by  customs,  by  vows,  to  varying 
extents,  and  it  is  still  an  open  question  whether  they  may  not  be 
further  repressed  than  is  generally  done  without  any  injurious 
consequences.  As  to  selfishness  or  avarice,  which  are  commonly 
supposed  to  be  natural  barriers  to  extensive  reforms,  these  are 
mere  complexes  of  elementary  wants,  which  are  of  quite  different 
appearance  when  their  constituents  are  reorganized.  For  ex- 
ample, selfish  strife  for  social  approval  has  a  totally  different 
effect,  according  as  social  approval  is  given  for  large  collections  of 
himian  heads,  or  is  given  for  peaceful,  '  law-abiding  '  conduct. 
And  so,  while  many  ideals  are  doubtless  not '  humanly  possible," 
it  is  practically  impossible  at  present  to  say  what  they  are. 

A  third  limitation  is  set,  not  by  our  common  endowments,  but 
by  our  differing  individual  mental  endowments,  our  differing 
innate  abilities.  This  subject  is  more  obscure  even  than  the  gen- 
eral behavior-mechanisms  we  have  been  discussing,^  but  even  from 
rough  observation  we  may  doubt  if  any  person's  character  is 
wholly  at  the  mercy  of  his  social  environment.  We  have  seen 
that  besides  the  specific  instincts  there  are  apparently  larger 
neural  structures  which  are  hereditary  and  give  a  special  bias  to 
the  learning  of  the  individual,  although  they  do  not  determine  any 
exact  responses.  Some  native  peculiarity  of  taste  and  ability  is 
characteristic  of  every  one  of  us,  it  would  seem,  since  children  of 

1  Thorndike  has  devoted  to  it  Vol.  Ill  of  his  recent  Educational  Psychology, 
with  data  gathered  chiefly  in  the  public  schools. 


202  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

about  the  same  training  develop  strikingly  different  abilities. 
This  '  about  the  same  training/  however,  covers  a  multitude  of 
differences,  and  carefully  sifted  evidence  is  still  scant.  It  may  be 
granted  to  the  social  psychologists  that  the  individual's  character 
is  quite  largely  a  social  product,  that  customs  and  institutions  are 
among  our  most  important  teachers,  that  we  are  to  some  extent 
molded  by  physical  and  social  influences;  ^  but  the  innate  factors 
of  *  nature  '  which  cannot  be  reduced  to  nurture,  are  much  to  be 
reckoned  with  in  the  future.  The  special  significance  of  these  in- 
dividual differences  for  reforms  of  motives,  as  we  shall  point  out 
in  a  following  chapter,  is  that  all  people  are  not  equally  suscep- 
tible to  the  development  of  a  given  ideal,  such  as  benevolence. 

The  extent  of  each  of  these  various  limitations  is  a  matter  to  be 
estabhshed  empirically  and  statistically,  far  more  than  by  psy- 
chological principles.  Economic  data,  business  and  sociological 
experiments,  historical  study,  and  many  other  sources  will  all 
yield  valuable  evidence  if  studied  scientifically. 

^  When  Cooley  claims  that  the  old  opposition  between  'individual '  and  'social' 
is  entirely  false,  because  the  individual  is  a  social  product,  he  is  going  a  little  too  far, 
however.  When  the  young  man  fights  and  dies  for  his  country,  there  is  a  conflict 
between  the  interests  of  society  and  of  the  individual  which  is  no  mere  figure  of 
speech. 


PART  III 

SOME  APPLICATIONS  OF  PSYCHOLOGY 
TO  PROBLEMS  OF  ECONOMIC  THEORY 

This  Part  is  of  a  more  technical  nature  than 

the  preceding  sections,  and  presupposes  some 

familiarity  with  economic  principles 


CHAPTER  XIV 

THE  PRESENT  STATE  OF  ECONOMIC  PSYCHOLOGY 

Hedonist  Premises  Brotudly  True 

The  reader  who  is  familiar  with  economic  discussions  will  not 
have  failed  to  apply  for  himself  the  fundamental  principles  of  mo- 
tives, which  we  have  set  forth  above,  to  various  economic  prob- 
lems in  which  he  is  interested.  Our  chief  object,  in  fact,  is  to 
make  contemporary  psychological  views  more  conveniently 
available  to  economic  students,  so  that  such  students  may  work 
out  any  consequences  which  seem  to  them  important.  As  a  be- 
ginning in  this  direction,  however,  we  shall  indicate  some  of  the 
more  obvious  appHcations  of  our  study  to  the  analyses  of  con- 
simiption,  value,  saving,  and  work.  Our  treatment  is  avowedly 
tentative  and  sketchy,  for  each  of  these  topics  is  extremely  large 
by  itself. 

At  the  outset  it  is  evident  that  our  conclusions  will  have  a  con- 
servative and  *  intellectuaHst '  slant,  for  we  have  found  that  re- 
cent work  on  habit  and  instinct  tends  to  confirm,  much  more  than 
James  and  McDougall  would  have  us  believe,  the  old  common- 
sense  hedonistic  assumptions  that  people  usually  act  for  the  sake 
of  expected  consequences  and  that  they  are  constantly  learning 
more  and  more  economical  means  of  getting  whatever  objects 
are  pleasing  to  them.  That  is  to  say,  all  people  are  '  rational,'  in 
the  only  reasonable  sense  of  the  word.  And  we  are  moved  to  work 
by  '  utilities  '  which,  for  the  most  part,  are  derived  from  economic 
goods.  These  broad  premises  of  the  classical  and  marginal  utility 
economics  are  still  unshaken. 

Of  course  many  economic  laws,  as  Bagehot  says,  are  only  first 
approximations,  or  smooth  diagrams  which  describe  the  main 
forces  but  leave  innumerable  minor  ones  to  be  filled  in.  Competi- 
tion, self-interest,  mobility  of  labor  and  capital,  knowledge  of 
where  one's  best  economic  opportunities  lie  and  unhindered  abil- 

305 


206  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

ity  to  pursue  them,  are  only  roughly  to  be  found  in  the  real  world, 
but  these  words  all  describe  biases  which  can  be  constantly 
counted  upon,  very  much  as  the  action  of  gravity  or  the  force  of  a 
wind  can  be  counted  upon  in  spite  of  the  effects  of  countervailing 
forces.  The  laws  in  all  other  sciences  are  approximations  too :  a  fall- 
ing apple  is  not  completely  true  to  the  gravitation  formula  because 
of  interference  by  the  air.  All  sciences,  therefore,  have  to  resort 
more  or  less,  as  ours  does,  to  the  great  principle  of  inertia  of  large 
numbers,  —  that  is,  in  a  large  number  of  observations,  when  one 
or  a  few  grand  forces  are  in  operation,  the  '  random  '  errors,  or 
variations  due  to  minor  forces,  offset  one  another,  and  the  average 
of  the  whole  series  is  found  to  agree  pretty  closely  with  the  the- 
oretical effect  of  the  main  forces.  Statistical  inductive  methods 
applied  to  mass  phenomena  must  be  used  to  prune  and  check  de- 
ductive reasoning,  in  all  these  fields,  because  it  is  practically  im- 
possible to  isolate  completely  the  operations  of  one  force  or  '  law.' 

This  dependence  upon  the  statistical  tool  is  nowhere  more 
marked  than  in  contemporary  psychology;  and  consequently  the 
economist  will  get  more  enlightenment  upon  most  points  of  eco- 
nomic psychology  from  his  own  behavior-statistics  than  from 
anything  in  the  doctrines  of  psychologists,  who  have  not  yet  got- 
ten around  to  the  special  problems  with  which  the  economist  is 
concerned.  Statistical  curves  and  deviation-measures  of  learn- 
ing, of  'intelligence  quotients,'  of  conditioned  reflexes,  and  of 
many  other  phenomena  are  being  collected  and  analyzed  in  the 
laboratory;  but  if  we  inquire  into  particulars  concerning  the  moti- 
vation relations  of  saving  and  the  interest  rate,  or  of  work  and 
wages,  the  psychologist  can  give  us  only  a  general  reply  which 
needs  exhaustive  elaboration  from  economic  experience  tables. 

We  must  avoid,  therefore,  both  undue  expectations  of  psy- 
chological touchstones,  and  undiscriminating  rejection  of  the 
hedonist  premises  of  the  classical  and  marginal  utility  economics. 
But  still  we  may  find,  in  the  modern  formulation  of  motives,  clues 
to  new  angles  of  attack  on  our  own  problems. 


CHAPTER  XV 

APPLICATIONS  TO  ECONOMIC  WANTS 

The  Nature  of  a  Want 

What  precisely  is  a  want?  It  always  involves  a  response-mecha- 
nism of  sense-organs,  nerves  and  muscles,  set  up  ready  to  do  a 
definite  piece  of  work  when  stimulated.  This  is  the  objective 
aspect  of  a  want;  anyone  can  observe  whether  a  man's  action  to- 
ward an  apple  is  buying,  eating,  or  indifference.  Usually  also 
there  is  a  subjective  side,  which  is  the  man's  consciousness  of 
what  he  does  or  is  set  to  do.  Sometimes  only  this  side  can  be  ob- 
served at  all,  by  methods  now  available :  the  man  merely  thinks 
"I  would  like  to  have  an  apple,  but  it's  not  worth  while,"  as  he 
goes  past  the  fruit  stand.  But  in  this  last  case  also,  as  we  have 
seen,  certain  of  the  man's  response-mechanisms  are  active.  These 
are  predominantly  vocal,  but  salivary,  other  internal,  and  per- 
haps the  begiimings  of  stopping  and  reaching  out  are  involved  too, 
though  not  in  such  fashion  as  to  be  evident  to  the  bystander  unless 
the  latter  be  equipped  with  very  delicate  instrimients.  In  this 
case  we  shall  have  to  take  the  man's  word  for  it  that  he  has  an 
'  ineffectual '  desire  for  an  apple;  yet  we  must  interpret  and  ac- 
count for  that  desire  just  as  we  do  for  any  response  of  which  he  is 
capable.  Sometimes  when  he  reports  that  his  motives  are  con- 
cerned only  with  right  and  justice,  we  find  that  his  actions  — 
including  these  protestations  of  disinterestedness  —  center  about 
the  amassing  of  property  for  himself.  (Attempting  to  prove  the 
universality  of  this  sort  of  behavior  is  the  peculiar  sport  of  eco- 
nomic interpreters  of  history.)  In  such  a  case  it  is  clear  that  the 
subjective,  '  conscious  '  report  is  entirely  inadequate  to  a  true 
view  of  the  motive-situation. 

In  brief,  as  we  have  reiterated  in  the  foregoing  chapters,  the 
physiological,    objective   behavior-series   alone   is    a    complete 


208  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

series;  and  so  we  propose  in  our  analysis  to  use  the  objective 
terminology  rather  than  the  concepts  of  sensations,  streams  of 
consciousness,  psychic  income,  feelings  or  other  subjective  en- 
tities. This  program  implies  no  adherence  to  any  particular 
doctrine  of  the  Freudian  psychology  except  the  commonplace  of 
imconscious  or  '  subconscious  '  responses  or  motives;  and  it  differs 
from  the  psychic  accounting  of  Fetter  and  Fisher  only  to  the  ex- 
tent that  the  subjective  side  of  motives  is  incomplete.  It  is 
essentially  the  program  of  all  generations  of  economists,  for  they 
have  always  drawn  their  premises  as  to  human  motives  from  what 
they  saw  men  in  the  mass  doing,  much  more  than  from  their  own 
solitary  introspection.  The  economist  is  a  behaviorist,  trying  to 
find  what  people  can  be  depended  upon  to  do  in  certain  common 
situations.   "Actions  speak  louder  than  words." 

Evolution  of  Wants 

There  are  two  broad  aspects  of  the  consumption  of  wealth 
which  are  of  special  interest  to  economists.  That  which  has 
claimed  most  attention  so  far  is  the  psychology  of  wants  in  rela- 
tion to  value,  —  diminishing  utility,  and  matters  connected 
therewith.  When  writers  speak  of  the  increased  importance 
which  consumption  has  attained  in  economics,  after  the  manner  of 
Jevons,^  they  are  usually  referring  to  the  advantages  derived  from 
the  marginal  utility  contributions  to  value.  '  Psychological 
schools '  of  economists,  in  general,  are  simply  marginal  utility 
enthusiasts. 

The  other  aspect  of  consumption  with  which  we  are  concerned 
is  the  evolution  of  wants :  how  people  come  to  want  just  what  they 
do  want.  This  latter  topic  is  the  ground  of  most  of  the  economic 
controversy  over  hedonism,  and  is  also  the  chief  interest  of  the 
social-value  school.  If  their  theory  were  called  '  social  utility ' 
instead  of  social  value  it  might  make  matters  clearer  to  most  of  us. 
Bohm-Bawerk  brushes  aside  this  line  of  inquiry,  and  insists  that 
the  theory  of  value  takes  wants  for  granted.   He  cares  not  why 

1  E.  g.,  M.  Roche- Agussol,  La  Psychologic  Economique  chez  les  Anglo- Ameri- 
cains  (1918),  p.  39:  "The  study  of  consumption,  traditionally  considered  as  a  post- 
economic  study,  becomes  more  and  more  a  body  of  principles  dominating  the  whole 
of  the  science." 


APPLICATIONS  TO  ECONOMIC  WANTS  209 

people  like  or  dislike  as  they  do;  he  notes  merely  that  their 
choices,  their  actions,  indicate  what  they  do  want,  and  his  busi- 
ness is  to  show  how  these  individual  choices  work  themselves  out 
into  market  value.^ 

This  division  of  labor  seems  legitimate  to  us,  even  if  the  social- 
value  contention  as  to  the  instabiUty  and  constant  interaction  of 
individual  wants  be  granted.  Consequently  we  shall  postpone 
most  of  the  questions  on  utility  to  another  chapter,  and  shall 
take  up  now  the  subject  of  mutations  or  evolution  of  wants. 

The  usefulness  which  any  light  upon  the  natural  history  of 
wants  would  have  has  already  been  touched  upon  in  our  first 
chapter.  There  is  interest  both  in  the  imderstanding  and  in  the 
control  of  economic  behavior;  and  study  of  the  genesis  of  existing 
wants  furnishes  a  clue  not  only  to  understanding  and  playing 
upon  existing  motives,  but  also  to  possibilities  of  grafting,  prun- 
ing and  training  motives  into  new  directions.  Obviously  con- 
sumers' wants,  using  the  term  broadly,  determine  not  only  what 
things  are  to  be  produced,  but  what  appeals  and  incentives  are 
necessary  to  get  them  produced.  It  is  no  doubt  true,  as  Hobson 
and  others  frequently  remind  us,  that  in  many  cases  a  producer 
can  *  create  '  a  demand  for  his  product;  but  plenty  of  bankrupt 
producers  —  imitators  of  Coca-Cola  or  what  not  —  who  have 
tried  such  a  campaign,  can  testify  that  it  is  not  invariably  success- 
ful. The  limits  of  educability  of  demands  is  thus  an  important 
issue.  Profits  are  usually  to  be  made  by  supplying  the  most 
urgent  wants  —  except  to  the  extent  that  inequalities  of  wealth 
or  of  persuasive  power  give  one  person's  want  a  greater  influence 
over  production  than  the  want  of  another  —  we  need  not  now  go 
into  the  fine  points  of  that  line  of  argument.  Hence,  whatever  im- 
provements in  welfare  may  be  possible  through  inventions  like 
labor-saving  machinery,  improvements  in  distribution  of  wealth, 
parliamentary  government,  or  other  social  procedure,  one  great 
reform  is  somehow  to  make  people  only  want  more  nearly  what  is 
good  for  them. 

^  Pos.  Theorie,  3d  ed.,  pp.  310-330. 


2IO  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

Transfer  of  Derived  Wants 

Wants  develop,  of  course,  from  the  interplay  between  the  indi- 
vidual's hereditary  (instinctive)  equipment  and  his  external 
world.  Both  inner  and  outer  items  are  variable  in  some  respects 
between  individuals.  The  instincts  are  probably  always  seeking 
or  avoiding  (positive  or  negative)  reactions;  ^  some  of  them  being 
connected  with  physiological  appetitive  mechanisms  which  pro- 
vide periodic  inner  stimulations  independently  of  the  outer 
situation,  others  being  responsive  only  to  certain  outer  stimuli 
which  may  never  be  encountered.  These  primitive  desires  or 
aversions,  as  we  may  now  briefly  call  them,  when  aroused,  often 
or  always  have  conscious  correlates  of  emotion,  or  of  pleasant- 
ness and  unpleasantness.  So  that  our  '  liking  '  a  thing,  and  our 
trying  to  get  it,  are  merely  two  ways  of  describing  the  same 
phenomenon;  we  cannot  scientifically  say  that  one  proceeds  from 
the  other.  These  instinctive  groups,  which  we  isolated  as  well  as 
we  could  in  Chapter  IX — mainly  hunger,  fear  (including  aver- 
sion to  painful  stimuli),  rage,  sex,  parental  manipulation,  gregari- 
ousness,  desire  for  social  approval,  and,  quite  probably,  the 
impulses  toward  laughter  —  stake  out  the  main  lines  to  which 
our  wants  always  conform. 

But  only  broad  and  vague  lines.  From  birth  onward,  our  hu- 
man learning  capacity  and  the  individual  peculiarities  of  our  ex- 
perience lead  each  of  us  ceaselessly  to  acquire  habit-mechanisms 
that  supplement  (and  often  quite  transform)  the  instinctive  re- 
sponses; so  that  there  results  the  confusing  variety  of  individual 
'interests.'  "One  man's  meat  is  another  man's  poison,"  and 
"There  is  no  disputing  over  tastes,"  etc.  Part  of  this  variabiHty, 
to  be  sure,  may  well  be  due  to  inborn  dijfferences,  rather  than  to 
mere  discrepancies  of  experience.  This  is  the  disputed  question  of 
aptitudes  such  as  musical.  It  is  also  observed  that  children  — 
after  a  few  months  of  infancy  —  form  new  habits  more  readily 
than  do  adults;  "old  dogs  find  it  hard  to  learn  new  tricks."  These 
commonplaces  cover  a  world  of  baffling  problems  for  the  psy- 
chologist; in  time  he  wiU  tell  us  more  exactly  what  mental  differ- 

^  See  Ch.  X,  above. 


APPLICATIONS  TO  ECONOMIC  WANTS  211 

ences  are  actually  innate  and  how  the  range  of  learning  capacity 
varies  with  age.  But  at  any  rate,  human  adaptability  and  plastic- 
ity is  so  great  that  accurate  generalization  concerning  want-evo- 
lution, beyond  a  few  simple  laws  of  association  or  habit-formation, 
is  extremely  difficult. 

The  principle  of  chief  importance  is  that  of  contiguity  or  con- 
ditioned reflex, —  in  effect  a  new  name  for  one  of  the  old  laws  of 
association  to  which  so  much  attention  has  been  given  in  the 
previous  chapters.  The  baby's  original  wants  as  to  food  include 
only  responses  to  the  touch  of  the  nipple;  while  the  sight  of  his 
mother,  or  a  white  bottle,  or  characteristic  sounds,  arouse  in 
him  no  observable  reactions.  But  after  experiencing  these  sights 
and  sounds  simultaneously  with  the  feeding  sensations  a  number 
of  times,  the  sight  of  an  empty  bottle,  or  of  any  round  white  thing, 
will  start  his  feeding  responses  going.  In  other  words,  he  has 
acquired  a  want  for  round  white  objects.  Fundamentally  that  is 
the  way  our  wants  progress. 

This  example  illustrates  the  common  case  of  want  transfer  by 
acquisition  of  knowledge,  the  ultimate  want  remaining  constant. 
The  child  has  '  discovered  '  in  a  crude  way  that  pursuit  of  roimd 
white  things  leads  to  satisfaction  in  feeding.  So  he  goes  on,  inces- 
santly discovering  other  technology,  other  physico-chemical 
affinities  in  the  natural  world  about  him.  So  the  race  has  gone  on, 
learning  that  certain  stones  can  be  treated  so  as  to  form  iron 
implements  whereby  their  food-getting,  combative,  manipulative 
and  other  impulses  could  be  satisfied.  This  growth  of  knowledge 
(and  also  of  pseudo-knowledge,  for  learning  is  fallible,  as  the 
utilitarians  knew  well  enough)  is  of  itself  constantly  changing  the 
demands  of  the  market.  People  learn  that  tooth  brushes  and 
paste  are  probably  means  to  avoid  toothache,  and  industries 
supplying  these  articles  arise.  Also  the  physical  environment  is 
constantly  offering  new  problems  due  to  climate,  to  increase  of 
population  and  exhaustion  of  some  resources,  and  to  the  new 
methods  whereby  we  live;  adaptation  to  these  innovations  must 
be  learned. 


212  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

The  Institution  op  Exchange 

From  wants  for  goods  and  services  arises  the  so-called  economic 
motive,  —  the  desire  for  wealth.  Yet  it  is  not  the  product  of  such 
wants  alone,  but  also  of  the  '  institution  '  of  exchange,  of  trucking 
and  bartering.  The  lower  animals  have  wants  for  goods,  but  they 
have  no  desire  for  generalized  wealth,  because  they  have  not 
learned  to  satisfy  their  wants  indirectly  by  exchange.  This  in- 
stitution of  exchange,  with  the  resulting  division  of  labor,  was  un- 
doubtedly of  exceedingly  slow  growth,  Hke  the  development  of 
language  or  any  of  the  other  fundamental  collective  habits;  but 
once  it  exists,  the  child  learns  readily  that  his  wants  for  goods  such 
as  candy  or  clothes  are  to  be  satisfied  most  readily  by  means  of 
money,  and  he  learns  also  the  means  to  get  money.  The  case  is 
similar  to  his  learning  to  talk  and  to  read  and  write;  and  so  far  as 
the  individual's  processes  are  concerned,  fundamentally  similar 
to  the  cat's  learning  the  location  of  the  milk  can. 

From  this  point  it  would  be  fairly  easy  to  explain  genetically 
why  '  avarice  '  has  been  recognized  throughout  history  as  a  con- 
trolling passion.  The  child  has  wants  for  particular  things,  includ- 
ing the  want  for  power  over  other  people.  He  is  not  avaricious  for 
money  or  generalized  wealth.  But  soon,  in  any  exchanging  soci- 
ety, he  learns  the  formula:  More  bribes  to  offer,  more  of  my 
wants  satisfied.  And  so  the  desire  for  wealth  easily  becomes  a 
master  motive,  though  a  derived  one.  Why  people  are  avaricious 
in  varying  degrees  is  another  matter;  here  we  are  only  pointing 
out  why  avarice  must  always,  in  any  form  of  society  where  ex- 
change on  more  than  the  most  limited  scale  is  feasible,  be  an  im- 
portant clue  to  human  behavior. 

In  a  similar  way,  the  observation  that  it  is  human  nature  to 
find  where  one's  advantage  lies  and  to  seek  it,  is  only  a  manner  of 
saying  that  all  people  have  rather  similar  private  wants,  and  have 
also  considerable  learning  capacity  wherewith  to  discover  how  to 
gratify  them. 

It  would  be  an  interesting  but  a  very  difficult  matter  to  seek  the 
instinctive  and  habitual  roots  of  this  trading  custom,  using  the 
historical  and  anthropological  evidence  available.  Doubtless  little 


APPLICATIONS  TO  ECONOMIC  WANTS  213 

explanation  is  required  for  the  disposition  people  so  universally 
show  of  wanting  to  reap  where  they  have  not  sown,  —  to  use  the 
products  of  another's  labor;  but  the  main  problem  is  to  explain 
how  peaceable  exchange  grew  up.  Biicher's  account  ^  would  prob- 
ably be  somewhat  modified  in  the  light  of  more  recent  evidence, 
but  it  is  plausible  enough  that  the  first  exchanges  were  between 
tribes  as  units,  even  between  tribes  which  were  so  fearsome  or 
hostile  toward  one  another  that  they  dared  not  come  face  to  face, 
but  left  their  wares  at  a  rendezvous,  and  returned  later  to  gather 
up  the  goods  which  had  meanwhile  been  left  by  the  '  buyer.'  A 
curious  inviolability,  or  immunity  to  warfare,  has  invested  fairs 
and  markets  from  very  early  times;  this  is  one  of  the  large  topics 
of  the  economic  historian.  The  proximate  explanation  why  the 
peace  was  kept  and  exchange  rather  than  mere  robbery  was  prac- 
tised, is  custom;  but  whence  the  custom?  We  shall  consider  eco- 
nomic custom  in  general  within  a  moment,  but  here  be  it  said  that 
the  old  utilitarian  explanation  must  again  be  drawn  upon.  In  the 
beginnings  some  people  found  it  to  their  advantage  to  pay,  rather 
than  to  rob,  since  robbery  was  liable  to  bring  uncomfortable 
retaliation.  It  was  somewhat  as  the  cat  finds  it  to  her  advantage 
to  stay  off  the  kitchen  table  when  people  are  around.  But  as  soon 
as  the  '  pioneers  '  began  to  enjoin  barter  on  their  children,  it  need 
never  occur  to  the  latter  that  there  was  any  other  possibility. 
The  latter  concession  may  be  allowed  toward  Adam  Smith's  re- 
jection of  the  utility  explanation.  We  may,  perhaps,  make  some 
allowance  for  the  tutelage  of  instinctive  gregariousness  and  quasi- 
instinctive  sympathy,  but  in  the  most  primitive  society  their 
effects  upon  exchange  are  not  apt  to  be  great. 

Transfer  of  Final  Wants 

So  far  we  have  been  considering  mainly  the  changes  in  methods 
of  satisfying  given  fundamental  wants,  assiraiing  the  latter  to  re- 
main constant.  But  there  is  another  case  of  want-mutation,  in 
which  what  was  originally  sought  as  a  means  (having  'instru- 
mental value,'  as  the  philosophers  of  value  say)  becomes  sought 
as  an  end  in  itself.  This  tendency  is  recognized  in  common  speech 

^  Industrial  Evolution,  Ch.  II. 


214  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

as  ''force  (inertia)  of  habit";  for  instance  "He's  got  used  to 
stinginess,  and  can't  change  his  ways  since  he  became  rich."  The 
thing  was  indifferent  or  positively  disagreeable  at  first,  perhaps, 
like  the  use  of  a  spoon  or  fork  to  a  baby,  but  after  sufficient  asso- 
ciation with  results  generally  pleasant,  one  likes  it  for  its  own 
sake. 

The  miser  was  James  Mill's  leading  example;  yet  all  of  us  feel  a 
pleasant  thrill  when  we  chance  to  '  make  some  money.'  The  good 
farmer  loathes  the  sight  of  weeds,  and  exults  at  the  spectacle  of 
big,  dark-green  growing  corn,  even  when  they  are  on  somebody 
else's  land.  And  as  Veblen  says,  we  admire  simply  and  unaffect- 
edly the  polish  of  a  black  boot,  but  abhor  the  shine  on  an  old  coat 
sleeve.  Originally  we  welcomed  or  spurned  the  thing  because  it 
was  a  causal  step  toward  something  else  liked  or  disliked  in  itself, 
but  now  the  something  else  has  dropped  out  of  consciousness  or 
has  become  secondary. 

A  similar  iiberiragung,  or  transfer  of  interest,  as  we  have  seen,  is 
a  cornerstone  of  the  Freudian  psychology,  and  it  is  indeed  prob- 
able that  a  goodly  proportion  of  all  the  ultimate  desires  or  aver- 
sions of  adult  life  —  our  tastes,  about  which  there  is  no  disputing 
—  were  derived  sometime  by  association  from  more  primitive 
tastes,  which  latter  have  now  dropped  away.  If  we  remember 
them  at  all,  as  when  we  are  confronted  by  an  old  portrait  album,  it 
is  with  astonishment  that  ever  we  could  have  been  so  foolish. 

Such  transfer  of  interest  is  psychologically  a  most  complex  and 
baffling  problem,  like  the  whole  of  pleasure-pain.  We  do  not 
know  in  just  what  type  of  cases  it  is  sure  to  take  place.  We  know 
that  there  is  a  constant  succession  of  interests  in  everybody,  and 
that  one  leads  to  another  by  repetition  of  experiences,  somewhat 
as  a  young  man  often  comes  to  love  the  girl  whom  at  first  he 
tolerated  only  for  the  sake  of  her  friend  in  whom  he  was  more 
interested.  It  is  evident  that  there  is  more  in  this  example  than 
mere  habit;  and  even  the  cultivation  of  a  taste  for  tobacco  or 
oysters  or  olives  is  perhaps  more  simple  and  to  the  point.  But  in 
the  whole  range  of  such  transitions  we  have  the  common  char- 
acters of  a  smoothing  down  of  irritations  which  were  felt  in  the 
learning,  a  discovery  of  unsuspected  congenital  preferences  which 


APPLICATIONS  TO  ECONOMIC  WANTS  215 

are  appealed  to  by  the  new  thing,  and  a  wearing  to  unconscious- 
ness of  the  original  major  response  (such  as  the  specific  pleasures 
for  which  money  was  sought) ;  while  the  unlocalized  aura  of  pleas- 
ant feeling-reactions  (partially  visceral)  which  are  the  anchor  of 
the  overt  responses  such  as  money-making,  remains  active,  and 
thus  makes  the  money  'give  satisfaction  '  for  its  own  sake. 

These  two  cases  of  want-mutation  are  interlocking.  In  our 
efforts  to  satisfy  existing  wants,  we  are  constantly,  though  often 
unwittingly,  acquiring  new  interests  which  will  demand  further 
means  of  satisfaction.  The  railway  cheapens  haulage  and  the  air- 
plane hastens  it,  but  both  open  up  new  demands  based  on  recrea- 
tive experiences.  Similarly  arise  the  moving  picture,  phonograph, 
camera,  automobile,  and  innumerable  other  industries. 

Insatiability  of  Wants 

Here  we  are  close  to  the  economist's  old  friend,  the  principle  of 
*  insatiabiHty  of  wants.'  "The  desire  of  food,"  as  Adam  Smith 
pointed  out,  "is  limited  in  every  man  by  the  narrow  capacity  of 
the  human  stomach,"  ^  and  similarly  there  seem  to  be  rather  nar- 
row natural  limits  to  our  needs  of  other  fundamental  necessities. 
Preachers  of  the  simple  life  have  an  unassailably  logical  case; 
'  poverty  '  could  be  ameliorated  and  perhaps  abolished  by  '  pro- 
gress '  if  everyone  contented  himself  with  a  generous  physi- 
ological minimimi  of  consumption,  and  kept  up  his  maximum 
productive  efforts  on  that  homely  fare.  Nothing  is  more  obvious, 
however,  than  that  the  wants  of  nearly  every  one  of  us,  even  for 
food,  keep  constantly  ahead  of  our  power  to  provide. 

This  apparent  insatiabiHty  of  wants  was  attributed  by  Adam 
Smith  to  universal  human  vanity  or  emulation  or  effort  to  imitate 
the  social  classes  above.  "The  desire  of  the  conveniences  and 
ornaments  of  building,  dress,  equipage,  and  household  furniture 
seems  to  have  no  limit  or  certain  boundary,"  and  in  many  other 
connections  he  intimates  that  '  bettering  one's  condition  '  is  a 
matter  of  social  rivalry  more  than  of  brute  comforts.  The  point  is 
elaborated  by  Veblen  and  Taussig.^ 

1  Wealth  of  Nations,  Bk.  I,  ch.  xi,  pt.  ii. 

2  Taussig,  Inventors  and  Money-Makers,  pp.  99  £f.  Veblen,  Theory  of  the 
Leisure  Class. 


2l6  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

This  quasi-instinctive  emulative  strain  in  wants  is  perfectly- 
clear,  and  is  tremendously  important,  yet  it  is  easily  exaggerated. 
We  learn  of  the  existence  and  nature  of  many  things  by  seeing 
them  in  the  possession  of  our  neighbors,  to  be  sure;  but  our  want- 
ing the  things  then  is  not  necessarily  due  mainly  to  our  desire  to 
keep  up  with  the  neighbors.  Vacuum  cleaners,  electric  washing 
machines,  automobiles,  houses  with  good  light  and  air,  are  goods 
which  many  people  are  working  toward;  they  are  more  expensive 
than  the  simple  life,  but  they  give  more  convenience  and  socia- 
bility and  better  health.  Good  medical  care,  the  most  healthful 
recreation,  the  broadest  education,  are  all  more  expensive  than 
the  simple  life  affords,  and  naturally  the  wealthier  persons  get 
them  first,  while  other  people  learn  of  their  existence  and  benefits 
through  these  wealthier  neighbors.  So  that  wants  are  likely  to 
expand  indefinitely  merely  from  continuous  discoveries  of  more 
effective  ways  of  satisfying  our  fundamental  needs. 

Of  course  the  existence  of  a  taste  proves  nothing  as  to  its  whole- 
someness,  or  whether  it  was  estabHshed  originally  through  mere 
social  emulation.  The  original  associations  may  be  good  or  bad; 
transfer  of  interest  takes  place  chiefly  on  the  basis  of  their  fre- 
quency. One  person  '  simply  and  unaffectedly  '  cannot  endure  a 
shoe  without  a  French  heel  and  a  toothpick  toe,  while  another 
can  endure  none  but  good  literature. 

The  Role  or  Custom 

We  must  now  give  some  further  accoimt  of  the  social  influences 
which  are  perhaps  preponderant  in  determining  the  detail  of  our 
wants.  Custom,  convention,  prestige,  fashion,  —  all  are  names 
radicating  the  power  which  a  group  exerts  over  the  choices  or  acts 
of  its  members,  through  mere  social  approval,  pubHc  opinion,  or 
uncompelled  deference  to  superior  competence.  This  is  the  prov- 
ince of  social  psychology,  which  uses  the  fundamental  principles 
we  have  been  discussing,  but  which  gives  special  attention  to  the 
reactions  of  individuals  to  the  presence  or  actions  (including  the 
thoughts  and  opinions)  of  their  fellows. 

Economists  who  have  cultivated  what  passed  for  social  psy- 
chology have  told  us  that  *  the  individual '  is  a  social  product; 


APPLICATIONS  TO  ECONOMIC  WANTS  217 

that  his  character,  his  desires,  his  capacities,  are  instilled  by  the 
physical  and  social  environment  into  which  he  happens  to  be  born. 
He  is  not  self-contained,  with  natural  and  stable  wants,  but  he  is 
constantly  shifting  his  likes  and  dislikes  with  the  '  social  mind  '  of 
his  '  crowd,'  which  is,  in  turn,  strongly  influenced  by  the  *  sug- 
gestions '  of  its  leaders.  Cooley,  B.  M.  Anderson,  and  J.  M.  Clark 
are  among  those  holding  these  views. 

With  some  demurring  on  the  score  of  innate  individual  capaci- 
ties (the  poet  or  the  athlete  is  born,  not  made) ,  which  do  seem  to 
shape  our  destinies  more  than  extremists  of  this  school  realize, 
we  may  say,  So  far,  good.  The  wants  of  all  of  us  are  greatly  in- 
fluenced by  the  attitudes  of  others;  but  can  we  go  further  with  the 
analysis  of  this  influence,  toward  finding  its  limits? 

Starting  with  custom,  which  embraces  the  more  stable  institu- 
tions, we  realize  at  once  that  the  physiological  inertia  of  habit  is  an 
important  element.  It  is  the  mechanical  nature  of  any  habit  to 
become  more  and  more  fixed  by  exercise,  so  that  if  the  outer  situa- 
tion were  simple  and  unchanging  and  our  original  impulses  har- 
monious, we  should  go  on  indefinitely  in  a  rut,  so  long  as  the 
responses  were  serviceable  enough  to  give  survival.  The  habitual 
response  to  a  given  stimulus  is  always  the  line  of  least  resistance, 
and  it  will  infallibly  occur  unless  an  equally  powerful  antagonistic 
response  is  simultaneously  stimulated,  when  we  have  a  problem 
that  calls  for  reasoning  or  invention.  The  lower  animals  are 
creatures  of  habit  much  more  than  we,  because  their  learning 
capacity  is  so  far  below  ours;  but  we  as  well  as  they  readily  fall 
into  customs  because  the  habitual  way  is  the  easiest  way. 

We  should  not  fail  also  to  connect  customs  with  certain  natural 
cycles  and  crises,  such  as  birth,  puberty,  death. 

Emulation  in  Custom 

And  of  course  there  are  more  active  factors.  Most  important 
undoubtedly  is  the  instinctive  (?)  desire  for  approval  from  our 
fellows.  As  Adam  Smith  and  Veblen  have  brought  out,  the  force 
of  emulation  is  shown  not  only  in  the  efforts  of  leaders  to  surpass 
each  other,  but  by  the  care  of  the  common  run  of  people  to  keep 
up  to  '  decent '  standards  of  their  class,  —  which  are  as  closely  in 


21 8  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

imitation  of  the  class  above  them  as  circumstances  allow.  It 
seems  to  us  there  is  no  need  of  assuming  two  instincts  —  both 
self-assertion  and  self-abnegation  —  as  McDougall  does.  One 
wins  the  largest  possible  applause  by  becoming  a  leader  if  he  can; 
if  that  is  impossible,  the  next  best  thing  is  to  court  approval  by 
falling  in  with  the  other  sheep  in  the  trail  of  the  lucky  leader.  Any 
notice  he  deigns  to  give  us  is  treasured  and  has  the  precious 
quality  of  distinction  or  prestige. 

We  have  argued  at  some  length  above  that  the  thorough-going 
utilitarian  explanation  of  desire  for  approval  is  inadequate, 
although  the  favorable  regard  of  our  neighbors  toward  us  unques- 
tionably is  a  goose  which  lays  for  us  many  golden  eggs  of  individ- 
ual advantage.  Apart  from  other  evidence  that  this  propensity  is 
one  of  the  strongest  of  our  original  motives,  we  conclude  that  the 
universal  conformity  to  the  mores  or  customs  in  all  stages  of 
civilization  is  out  of  all  proportion  to  the  individual  rewards 
gained  or  the  corporal  or  supernatural  punishment  actually 
invoked. 

Many  authorities,  with  Sutherland,  believe  that  the  moral  cus- 
toms or  ideals  spring  chiefly  from  the  unselfish  parental  instincts; 
and  we  have  seen  that  in  some  circumstances  this  devotional 
enthusiasm  might  be  transferred  by  associations  to  formerly  in- 
different objects.  But  common  observation  of  the  way  children 
acquire  moraUty,  together  with  the  general  facts  of  custom  in  un- 
civilized peoples,  lead  the  writer  to  believe  with  Adam  Smith,  that 
our  neighbor,  who  is  removed  from  our  passions  and  hence  takes 
what  is  for  us  a  disinterested  and  imselfish  view  of  our  case,  and 
whose  approval  we  instinctively  crave,  is  the  pivot  of  our  moral 
sentiments.  The  case  is  only  a  few  degrees  removed  from  that 
aversion  to  being  thought  queer,  which  makes  us  conform  to  some 
of  the  most  irrational  social  usages. 

In  the  course  of  transfers  of  this  enthusiasm  we  lose  conscious- 
ness of  its  origin,  and  we  only  know  that  we  are  willing  to  sacrifice 
our  own  '  interest '  for  the  sake  of  an  abstract '  principle.'  But  in 
the  present  writer's  view,  the  motive  power  of  such  principles  is  in 
the  unconscious  habit-mechanisms  and  in  the  feeling-responses  to 
approval,  which  have  now  become  mere  desire  for  praiseworthi- 


APPLICATIONS  TO  ECONOMIC  WANTS  219 

ness.  Self-respect  is  the  term  commonly  used  to  point  to  our 
independence  of  any  punitive  suasion,  and  its  name  also  points 
to  the  real  derivation  of  this  motive  from  the  respect  or  approval 
of  other  people. 

In  some  cases,  as  in  legal,  religious,  or  mere  business  customs, 
the  punishment  for  violation  is  consciously  borne  in  mind,  but 
more  important  for  most  people  is  the  '  disgrace  '  (disapproval)  of 
being  found  out  and  punished,  which  is  even  more  strongly 
dreaded.  On  the  other  hand,  whenever  the  '  sanctions  '  of  nat- 
ural or  social  or  supernatural  punishments  or  restraints  are  re- 
moved, the  ordinary  egoistic  motives  are  likely  to  undermine  the 
custom  until  it  becomes  ''more  honored  in  the  breach  than  in  the 
observance,"  and  then  it  has  no  hold.  The  decay  of  the  ban  on 
Sunday  recreations  in  many  communities  is  an  example. 

Fashions 

In  that  peculiar  class  of  customs  which  we  call  fashions  or 
styles  or  modes,  there  must  be  other  instinctive  factors.  Fashions 
differ  from  institutions  by  the  rapidity  with  which  they  change. 
The  innovations  are  made  by  leaders  of  some  sort,  —  in  women's 
clothing  the  leaders  are  said  to  be  from  the  demimonde.  The  pro- 
ducers of  articles  of  style  naturally  foster  changes  by  manifold 
clever  methods,  and  often  it  seems  that  they  really  make  the 
styles.  To  some  extent  they  do ;  during  the  war  governments  were 
able  to  enforce  considerable  economies  of  materials  by  bringing 
about  agreements  among  manufacturers  limiting  the  numbers  of 
designs.  But  in  normal  times  bad  guesses  of  *  what  they  will 
be  wearing  '  make  one  of  the  ordinary  costs  of  every  clothing 
producer. 

It  appears  that  the  instincts  or  quasi-instincts  which  we  have 
grouped  under  '  curiosity,'  including  the  pursuit  of  novelty,  make 
innovations  appealing.  Habits  are  easiest  to  follow,  yet  they  lead 
to  some  fatigue  and  unpleasantness,  and  so  when  somebody  shows 
a  novel  rendering  of  an  old  theme,  and  one  which  respected  per- 
sonages are  sponsoring,  we  are  inclined  to  adopt  it.  Once  the 
adoption  has  gone  far  enough,  the  urgency  of  the  social-approval 
pressure  is  indicated  by  the  proverb  "One  might  as  well  be  dead 
as  out  of  style." 


220  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

Utility  and  Custom 

The  obvious  fallibility  of  customs  —  that  they  are  often  more 
a  hindrance  than  a  help  to  their  followers,  in  the  struggle  for 
existence  —  is  apt  to  blind  us  to  the  rational  basis  underlying 
them  generally.  In  every  case  they  are  the  result  of  some  one's 
inference  as  to  a  way  of  getting  what  he  wanted.  The  inference 
may  have  been  quite  too  hasty,  as  in  the  case  of  a  dance  to  bring 
rain,  or  of  carrying  a  rabbit's  foot  to  '  keep  away  the  hoodoo  ' ; 
but  some  correlation  of  events  is  the  unit  of  all  our  knowledge  and 
behavior.  There  is  a  continuous  transition  from  the  imwarranted 
inference,  drawn  from  chance  associations  like  these,  to  the 
scientific  law  based  on  the  largest  possible  number  of  coincidences, 
from  which  we  get  such  a  '  custom  '  or  collective  habit  as  utilizing 
electricity. 

Custom  is,  in  our  view,  simply  a  large  branch  of  the  tree  of 
knowledge;  subject,  therefore,  to  plenty  of  infirmities  of  error,  but 
based  on  genuine  learning  and  susceptible  of  steady  indefinite 
improvement.  In  both  knowledge  and  custom,  conventional 
arbitrary  symbols,  such  as  frock  coats  or  alphabets  or  the  Arabic 
system  of  numerals,  are  important;  both  are  fundamentally  ways 
of  reacting  toward  the  environment,  and  both  are  constantly 
being  tested  by  their  relative  success  in  want-satisfaction.  Both 
are  transmitted  from  generation  to  generation  by  imitative  learn- 
ing. Many  of  our  reactions  are  acquired  by  individual  contact 
with  the  physical  environment,  —  reactions,  say  to  the  heat  of 
fire,  to  the  ferocity  of  animals,  to  the  properties  of  water,  etc.  In 
many  cases  each  of  us  individually  makes  real  inventions  or  dis- 
coveries. But  doubtless  the  larger  part  of  our  behavior  in  detail  is 
imitative;  it  takes  advantage  of  what  other  people  have  invented. 
The  child  is  coerced  or  cajoled  into  imitating  his  elders  as  to  eat- 
ing, sleeping,  etc.,  and  soon  he  has  a  general  imitative  habit.  This 
copying  habit  carries  over  so  that  finally  he  automatically  looks 
about  to  see  how  some  one  else  is  doing  it,  when  he  is  confronted 
by  a  puzzling  situation,  as  in  going  into  a  strange  cafeteria  to  eat. 
The  pages  of  anthropology  are  full  of  borrowing  between  tribes  or 
nations,  of  such  tricks  as  fire-making,  pottery,  analine  dyes,  and 


APPLICATIONS  TO  ECONOMIC  WANTS  221 

so  on.  The  great  characteristic  of  modem  civilization  is  that  it 
embahns  discoveries  in  print,  making  a  cumulative  stock  of  other 
people's  experiences. 

But,  says  the  anti-intellectualist,  you  have  confused  conscious 
with  unconscious  imitation.  My  interest  is  in  unconscious  ab- 
sorption of  customary  methods  and  ideas,  which  are  unreflect- 
ingly believed  right  and  true,  though  in  fact  they  are  as  apt  to  be 
wrong  as  right.  The  above  discussion  of  reasoning  in  Chapter  XI, 
however,  has  shown  that  the  transition  from  '  imconscious  in- 
ference '  to  elaborate  trains  of  reasoning  (which  include  the  habit, 
"Now  I'm  thinking  awfully  hard")  is  continuous;  that  the  two  are 
fundamentally  of  the  same  character.  The  ultimate  test  of  both  is 
successful  dealing  with  external  nature. 

Unquestionably  every  human  being  absorbs  all  manner  of 
tricks  from  his  society's  culture,  like  its  language,  without  reason- 
ing why  or  wherefore,  without  realizing  all  their  implications, 
without  its  occurring  to  him  that  other  methods  might  be  better 
suited  to  the  purpose.  The  learning  process  in  its  early  stages 
knows  nothing  of  whys,  it  is  merely  a  matter  of  habit-formation 
by  repetitions  of  simultaneous  experiences.  One  '  beheves,'  there- 
fore (that  is,  acts  upon),  what  he  is  taught,  imtil  some  discrep- 
ancy of  experience  is  serious  enough  to  jar  him  into  questioning. 
Reflection,  criticism,  experiment,  in  place  of  contented  accept- 
ance of  fairly  successful  means  of  satisfying  wants,  is  a  habit 
which  many  people  never  stumble  upon. 

It  must  be  remembered  that  the  habits  of  every  one  of  us  con- 
tain numerous  unnecessary  kinks  which  have  never  been  elim- 
inated by  isolation  of  their  results.  The  baby  screams  and  also 
kicks  when  he  wants  his  bottle;  the  bottle  comes,  apparently  in 
response  to  both.  So  he  is  confirmed  in  that  dual  signal,  though 
the  yelling  alone  would  be  sufficient.  Business  men  commonly  be- 
lieve they  are  conducting  their  affairs  in  the  most  efficient  and 
profitable  manner  possible;  but  experimental  methods,  varying 
the  circiunstances  enough  to  test  each  step  instead  of  judging  by 
the  gross  product  of  all  together,  give  rise  to  a  steady  stream  of 
successful  innovations.  Any  scientist  is  acutely  conscious  of  the 
difficulty  of  isolating  causes. 


222  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

Then,  of  course,  there  are  two  other  common  weaknesses  in 
customs  and  in  knowledge  of  any  kind.  First,  the  situation  in 
which  they  were  originally  formed  may  have  changed  so  that  they 
are  obsolete.  Henry  Adams  lamented  that  his  eighteenth-century 
political  traditions  imfitted  him  for  the  nineteenth-century  world 
of  finance.  Racial  groups  of  people  are  constantly  going  to  pieces 
upon  contact  with  neighbors  of  a  different  civilization.  Secondly, 
the  custom  may  have  been  started  by  a  crafty  teacher  principally 
for  his  own  benefit;  which  case  seems  to  be  common  among  sooth- 
sayers and  medicine  men,  but  is  by  no  means  limited  to  them. 
Any  animal  will  use  other  members  of  his  race,  the  same  as  the 
rest  of  his  environment,  as  best  he  can  in  order  to  satisfy  his  own 
wants.  By  instinct  and  by  training  his  own  wants  may  or  may 
not  include  the  welfare  of  these  other  members. 

Finally  let  it  be  noted,  though  we  shall  recur  to  the  point  again, 
that  a  great  many  of  the  customs  which  we  unthinkingly  adopt 
are  perfectly  successful,  and  perhaps  have  been  elaborately  proved 
so.  The  workman  in  mechanical  operations  often  follows  instruc- 
tion charts  without  knowing  anything  of  the  sciences  behind 
them.  Hence  in  no  case  is  uncritical  acceptance  of  a  habit,  in 
itself,  any  positive  argument  against  the  vahdity  of  what  is  ac- 
cepted. 

So  much  for  the  influence  of  custom.  The  gist  of  the  matter  is 
that  custom  is  not,  as  the  historical  and  institutional  economists 
often  give  us  to  understand,  a  power  of  darkness  opposing  the 
pure  rational  faculty  of  man,  but  is  one  phase  of  his  rational  ac- 
tivities, and,  like  the  rest  of  knowledge,  is  constantly  undergoing 
change  by  rational  discoveries  or  pseudo-discoveries. 

Classifications  of  Wants 

A  few  words  may  now  be  said  about  the  natural-conventional 
and  lower-higher  classifications  of  wants.  The  transitoriness  and 
plasticity  which  characterize  motives  (both  as  to  means  and  ends), 
must  make  us  avoid  the  assumption  that  any  adult  wants  are,  in 
detail,  stereotyped  by  human  nature.  The  instincts  and  appetites 
provide  seeds,  but  the  growing  motives  are  more  responsive  to  the 
outer  situation  than  any  plants  to  which  we  might  compare  them. 


APPLICATIONS  TO  ECONOMIC  WANTS  223 

There  seems  to  be  a  natural  priority  ranking  among  original 
impulses  which  corresponds  roughly  to  the  usual  lower-higher 
division.  Some  psychologists  believe  with  Sherrington  that  the 
pain-avoiding  responses  are  so  imperious  or  '  prepotent '  under 
stimulation,  as  usually  to  inhibit  any  other  responses  simulta- 
neously stimulated.  Hunger  and  the  parental  responses,  in  their 
most  urgent  stages,  are  probably  prepotent  over  sex,  and  all  these 
will  naturally  shut  out  the  social-approval  and  aimless  manipula- 
tion responses.  These  '  lower  '  wants  must  be  satisfied  in  a  degree 
before  the  '  higher  '  can  manifest  themselves;  although  it  is  often 
pointed  out  that  the  poorer  classes  are  apt  to  stint  them.selves  on 
nourishing  food  in  order  to  buy  conventional  necessities.  When 
one's  energy  is  spent  providing  the  barest  subsistence,  obviously 
the  wants  of  culture  are  not  to  be  developed,  and  his  experience 
contains  more  of  the  unpleasantness  of  clamoring  appetites  and 
pain  and  obstructed  impulses  than  is  the  case  when  he  finds  it 
easier  to  get  food  and  protection.  With  larger  resources  at  hand, 
more  elaboration  can  be  required  in  all  classes  of  satisfactions, 
food,  clothing,  and  shelter  included.  Comparisons  of  budgets 
of  families  having  different  incomes  show  that  about  the  same 
proportion  of  income  is  spent  on  these  items  as  a  rule  (Engel's 
law). 

But  in  any  case  the  human  animal  goes  on  forming  new  habits 
from  the  day  of  his  birth,  so  that  lower  as  well  as  higher  wants 
prescribe  immensely  diflferent  modes  of  satisfaction  among  dif- 
ferent individuals.  One  man's  meat  is  another  man's  - —  or  an- 
other tribe's  —  poison,  all  depending  on  differing  influences 
which  have  developed  their  habits.  And  the  habitual  ('  artificial ') 
elements  often  form  systems  which  are  stronger  than  any  lower 
desires,  —  as  when  a  man  accepts  imprisonment  for  '  principle,' 
or  starves  rather  than  revert  to  cannibalism.  The  distinction  be- 
tween natural  and  conventional  wants,  therefore,  in  any  grown 
person  is  but  a  shadowy  one. 

A  study  of  the  great  class  of  esthetic  wants  from  the  psycho- 
economic  point  of  view  would  be  of  considerable  interest,  but  the 
present  writer  has  not  undertaken  it.  Veblen,  of  course,  has 
made  valuable  contributions,  but  his  analysis  as  a  whole  seems 


224  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

oversimplified.  The  study  of  esthetics,  more  or  less  scientific,  has 
been  a  recognized  branch  of  philosophy  since  Aristotle;  and  the 
English  psychologist  Marshall  twenty  years  ago  attempted  to 
base  it  upon  the  psychology  of  pleasure-pain.^  His  psychology, 
however,  has  been  in  considerable  measure  superseded.  The 
original  tendencies  toward  manipulation  and  exploration  which 
are  loosely  called  '  workmanship  '  and  *  curiosity  '  are  doubtless 
important  here,  as  well  as  instinctive  rhythmical  vocalization; 
and  quite  likely  idiosyncrasies  of  color-preference  play  a  part. 

Static  and  Dynamic 

The  incessant  changes  in  wants,  together  with  the  correspond- 
ing evolution  of  knowledge  and  technology,  and  the  increase  of 
population,  are  the  '  dynamic  '  factors  in  economic  processes. 

The  two  series  of  changes,  in  wants  and  in  technology,  inter- 
act; existing  wants  always  exerting  pressure  on  the  productive 
methods,  and  the  alterations  in  the  productive  methods,  such  as 
the  growth  of  cities,  giving  rise  to  still  other  wants.  The  process 
is,  as  Veblen  says,  cumulative,  as  is  also  true  of  any  other  series  of 
events  in  the  natural  world.  Each  stage  is  a  new  combination  of 
results  for  the  old  incessant  forces  of  nature  to  work  further  upon. 

The  distinction  between  dynamic  or  genetic,  and  static,  seems 
to  us  however  to  be  overdone  in  economic  literature.  It  is  not  a 
matter  of  time  or  of  complexity  among  the  phenomena,  nor  of 
more  or  less  '  taxonomy,'  but  simply  a  matter  of  more  or  less 
abstraction.  The  classical  laws  of  wages  and  interest,  for  ex- 
ample, certainly  involve  cumulative  changes  in  population,  food 
supply,  and  so  on,  taking  long  periods  of  time  to  work  out;  but 
they  are  static,  as  are  most  of  our  laws,  in  that  they  abstract  cer- 
tain factors  in  the  situation  from  the  rest  of  the  situation  and  dis- 
regard the  '  disturbing  '  effects  of  the  latter.  Any  dynamic  or 
genetic  laws  we  ever  get  will  be  abstractions  too,  disregarding 
some  parts  of  the  crowding  flux  of  reality.  There  will  always  be  a 
dynamic  residue  of  forces,  however,  which  have  not  been  reckoned 
with  or  reduced  to  order  in  our  principles.  At  present  the  changes 
in  demands  are  for  the  most  part  in  this  unexplained  residue,  for 

1  H.  R.  Marshall,  Pain,  Pleasure  and  Esthetics. 


APPLICATIONS  TO  ECONOMIC  WANTS  225 

the  general  principle  of  insatiability  of  all  wants  tells  nothing 
about  the  ways  in  which  particular  wants  change  and  the  corre- 
sponding effects  on  the  whole  economic  system.  We  may  agree 
with  Veblen  and  the  other  institutional  economists  that  theory  on 
this  phase  of  economic  processes  is  neglected  and  important,  but 
we  need  not  accept  their  conclusions  as  to  the  exact  way  in  which 
human  instincts,  customs  and  other  envirormiental  factors  have 
interacted  to  shape  industrial  development,  —  their  conclusions 
obviously  being  based  on  a  very  limited  part  of  the  total  data 
required. 

Conscious  Control  of  Wants 

There  is  one  more  aspect  of  wants  which  we  must  suggest,  — 
the  possibility  of  conscious  control  of  them  for  ulterior  ends. 

We  are  all  familiar  with  this  process  in  advertising  and  other 
forms  of  salesmanship  or  persuasion.  '  Selling  an  idea  '  is  the  con- 
temporary slang  equivalent  for  the  Sophists'  art.  Many  books  are 
being  written  on  the  psychology  of  advertising,  emphasizing  the 
ancient  device  of  appealing  to  the  audience's  emotions,  and  taking 
some  account  of  the  canons  of  good  taste  esthetically.  The  effec- 
tiveness of  mere  reiteration  is  a  modern  discovery  by  business 
men.  No  one  could  have  predicted  a  priori  that  simply  the  dis- 
play of  "Uneeda  Biscuit"  or  countless  bill-boards  and  printed 
pages  would  materially  affect  the  sales  of  that  commodity,  but 
now  everyone  knows  that  consumers  are  predisposed  toward  a 
product  that  is  kept  before  their  eyes,  apart  from  the  real  advan- 
tages of  trade-marked  goods  as  to  uniform  quality. 

The  psychologists  of  advertising  all  insist  that  the  argumenta- 
tive type  of  appeal  has  a  different  applicability  from  the  sugges- 
tive, emotional  or  esthetic,  '  short-circuit '  type.  All  persuasion 
is,  however,  essentially  argimientative  or  inferential.  The  dif- 
ference between  the  picture  of  a  pretty  girl  holding  a  bar  of  soap, 
and  the  page  of  closely-printed  paragraphs,  is  simply  one  of  de- 
gree. In  either  case,  as  we  need  not  be  told,  there  is  the  possibility 
of  too  hasty  and  unwarranted  inference,  as  when  a  merchant  pro- 
claims that  he  is  "just  out  of  the  high  rent  district,"  and  therefore 
sells  for  less.  The  simpler  type  would  not  commonly  be  called  a 
logical  process,  but  like  the  other,  it  tries  to  point  out  to  the  cus- 


226  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

tomer  that  this  object  has  the  earmarks  (cheapness,  beauty  or 
other  suitabiHty)  of  a  class  of  objects  toward  which  he  is  in  the 
habit  of  reacting  positively.  In  somewhat  similar  fashion  there  is 
pointed  out  to  the  mouse  the  earmark  of  cheese  in  our  trap,  while 
the  other  circumstances  of  the  case  are  not  emphasized  to  him. 
This  simple  physiology  of  habit  (association)  is  all  we  mean  by 
hasty  inference. 

The  fallibility  of  salesmanship  as  a  process  of  want-satisfac- 
tion, it  should  be  said,  is  not  wholly  a  matter  of  '  honesty  '  or 
'  dishonesty  '  in  the  vendor's  statements.  All  he  says  may  be 
true,  and  yet  the  customer  may  be  misled  as  to  the  object's 
suitability  for  his  needs. 

We  cannot  attempt  here  to  go  extensively  into  the  applications 
of  psychology  to  advertising.  Incidentally  it  may  be  remarked, 
however,  that  most  of  the  current  books  are  founded  on  McDoug- 
all's  psychology,  and  consequently  their  fundamentals  leave  much 
to  be  desired,  from  our  point  of  view,  regarding  the  instincts  and 
their  relations  to  reason. 

Control  of  Wants  for  Public  Ends 

With  the  imderstanding  of  mental  processes  which  will  now  be- 
come increasingly  available,  conscious  control  over  wants  may  be 
more  effectively  undertaken  for  pubhc  or  altruistic  ends.  This 
enterprise  is  very  old;  not  only  prophets  and  statesmen,  but  un- 
told generations  of  parents  have  labored  with  much  success  to 
instill  better  characters  into  their  children.  It  is  traditionally  the 
task  of  the  moralist  to  call  people  from  the  pursuit  of  follies  to  a 
striving  toward  (what  he  considers)  better  ideals;  and  an  econ- 
omist-moralist has  especial  competence  for  suggesting  changes  in 
material  demands  which  would  lead  to  a  fuller  general  satisfaction 
of  wants.  The  classical  demonstrations  of  the  advantage  of  sav- 
ing over  spendthrift  consumption,  and  of  the  need  of  moral  re- 
straint on  the  laboring  population,  are  clear  cases  of  this  kind. 
Lately,  the  patent  fact  that  numerous  private  and  public  agencies. 
are  constantly  swaying  consumers'  wants,  and  that  such  influenc- 
ing is  often  pubHcly  harmful  though  privately  profitable,  has  led 
to  the  beginning  of  a  "Theory  of  Economic  Guidance,"  by  a  keen 


APPLICATIONS  TO  ECONOMIC  WANTS  22/ 

American  economist  of  the  younger  generation.^  In  his  analysis 
it  is  proposed  to  show  the  guidance  of  economic  choices  by  the 
individual  himself,  and  by  commercial,  cooperative  and  public 
agencies,  —  including  the  unconscious  influences. 

Quite  as  a  matter  of  course,  the  '  selling  '  methods  which  have 
been  developed  in  business  are  being  adapted  to  public  purposes, 
and  often  effectively.  Advertisers  and  artists  in  all  countries  were 
mobilized  to  produce  posters,  badges,  leaflets,  banners,  lantern 
slides,  etc.,  to  fight  the  Great  War,  and  recruiting,  loans,  and  food 
conservation  all  were  thus  aided.  Similar  devices  are  often  used 
for  charitable  or  religious  agencies,  such  as  the  Interchurch 
World  Movement,  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.,  and  educational  campaigns. 
These  naturally  are  not  always  so  successful  as  the  war  propa- 
ganda, for  they  may  not  have  *  goods  '  which  are  intrinsically  so 
desirable  to  '  sell ';  and  the  '  selUng  '  methods  may  moreover  be 
bunglesome.  But  gradually  we  may  expect  to  see  all  the  new 
effective  arts  of  persuasion  utilized  for  altruistic  purposes, — in- 
cluding frequently  even  the  less  scrupulously  honest  arts.  Stand- 
ards of  taste  may  soon  be  *  sold,'  many  people  hope,  on  a  wide 
enough  scale  to  restrict  considerably  some  selUng  devices,  notably 
the  bill-board. 

Our  distinction  between  wants  for  goods  as  means,  and  wants  for 
goods  that  are  ends  in  themselves,  is  useful  either  in  evaluating 
the  social  effects  of  private  salesmanship  or  in  planning  guidance 
directly  for  public  benefit.  Obviously  a  large  part  of  salesman- 
ship is  concerned  with  conveying  knowledge  to  people  as  to  how 
and  where  they  can  get  what  they  want.  But  much  of  the  so- 
called  influencing  of  wants,  is  simple  deception,  as  to  means  to- 
ward ends  about  which  there  is  no  dispute.  People  want,  say,  a 
cure  for  tuberculosis,  or  durable,  fast-colored  cloth;  and  the 
vendor  falsely,  even  if  unwittingly,  persuades  them  that  his  goods 
are  up  to  their  specifications.  The  only  remedy  for  this  situation  is 
the  old-fashioned  one  of  more  education,  more  scientific  discovery 
of  causes.  The  government  can  doubtless  be  expected  to  enlarge 
its  sphere  of  compulsory  market  standards,  but  this  again  is  de- 
pendent on  a  general  increase  of  knowledge. 

^  J.  M.  Clark,  "  Economics  and  Modern  Psychology,"  Jour.  Pol.  Econ.,  26:  136- 
i66  (1918). 


228  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

But  there  is  also  a  large  field  for  genuine  transformation  of 
tastes,  which  includes  the  development  of  latent  tastes.  The  pro- 
ducer tries  to  get  people  to  like  his  Coca  Cola  better  than  other 
things  they  might  buy,  or  to  want  to  shave  every  day, — by  means 
of  his  safety  razor. ^  This  transfer  of  interest  must  be  accom- 
plished by  grafting  upon  existing  interests,  as  we  have  explained, 
and  by  repetition  of  the  appeal  in  various  guises. 

The  moralist,  from  whatever  quarter  he  may  come,  who  is  con- 
cerned with  getting  the  public  to  want  the  right  things,  has  there- 
fore these  same  two  methods  of  attack.  He  may  try  to  enlighten 
them  by  explaining  how  they  are  defeating  some  of  their  strongest 
ultimate  purposes  (or  even  trivial  purposes),  such  as  their  per- 
sonal health,  their  curiosity  about  the  world,  the  welfare  of  their 
loved  ones  or  country,  or  their  mere  wish  for  pure  food,  by  be- 
havior which  is  ill-adapted  to  these  ends,  —  that  is,  by  their 
wasteful  living  or  because  they  will  buy  that  rascal  Jones'  bread. 
If,  on  the  other  hand,  he  finds  them  getting  exactly  what  they 
want  —  whiskey,  for  example  —  but  that  their  ultimate  wants  are 
in  his  view  depraved,  he  can  try  the  grafting,  repetition  and 
curiosity  process,  of  instilling  new  final  purposes. 

Such  a  moralist  is  likely  to  become  impatient  at  the  tedium  and 
uncertainty  of  either  method,  and  to  long  for  forcible  repression  of 
the  offending  desires.  Drastic  measures  undoubtedly  have  their 
place,  as  has  whipping  or  its  equivalent  in  the  rearing  of  children. 
Prohibition  of  intoxicants,  if  enforced  a  generation  or  two,  will 
probably  wean  us  away  from  any  conscious  want  for  alcohol;  and 
innumerable  other  reforms  of  motives  are  possible  if  the  environ- 
ment be  wisely  ordered.  But  forcible  training  of  this  kind,  even  if 
wise,  is  hardly  feasible  without  the  support  of  a  goodly  majority  of 
the  people,  and  so  there  will  always  remain  plenty  of  reforms  in 
wants  to  be  accomplished  by  persuasive  and  educative  methods. 

^  A.  W.  Shaw,  in  "Some  Problems  of  Market  Distribution,"  pp.  41  ff.,  dis- 
tinguishes between  "conscious  needs"  and  "unformulated  needs,"  the  latter  being 
brought  to  consciousness  by  discovery  of  a  new  product,  such  as  the  safety  razor. 


CHAPTER  XVI 

UTILITY  AND  COST 

The  dual  usage  of  value  of  which  Adam  Smith  spoke  —  value  in 
use  and  value  in  exchange  —  remains  a  plague  to  us,  accentuated 
by  the  ambiguity  of  the  German  Werth,  which  had  to  be  employed 
by  so  many  value  theorists  on  the  Continent.  Some  economists, 
who  have  given  special  attention  to  the  philosophical  General 
Theory  of  Value  as  well  as  to  the  Continental  economists,  insist 
that  value  is  an  absolute,  not  a  relative  term,  —  that  it  is  a  quan- 
tity of  *  motivating  power,'  of  either  the  economic,  esthetic,  moral, 
nutritive,  or  other  variety.  The  term  utility,  however,  is  well 
established  in  English  economic  writing  for  the  simple  quality  of 
*  being  wanted  by  some  subject,'  whereas  value,  in  whatever 
usage,  implies  some  sort  of  comparison  or  measuring  or  relation, 
among  wants.^  Ours,  therefore,  will  be  the  traditional  usage  as 
found,  for  example,  in  Marshall;  and  this  chapter  will  be  devoted 
to  exploration  of  the  psychological  backgroxmd  of  utility. 

Objective  and  Subjective  Aspects 

The  first  step  necessary  is  to  correlate  as  well  as  may  be,  the 
objective  and  subjective  aspects  of  utility.  In  accordance  with 
our  previous  discussions,  we  consider  the  objective  account  fim- 
damental:  a  thing  has  utility  whenever  it  is  wanted,  and  it  is 
wanted  whenever  a  human  being  is  so  constructed  as  to  respond 
positively  (in  a  seeking  way)  toward  it  whenever  it  (directly  or 
mediately)  stimulates  him.  Contrariwise,  a  thing  has  disutility 
when  the  subject's  response  is  one  of  repulsion,  i.  e.,  is  negative. 
This  centering  of  attention  on  the  behavior  of  the  subject  with 
reference  to  the  object  is  characteristic  of  economists'  practice, 

^  "  Wantability,"  as  Fisher  suggests,  would  undoubtedly  better  convey  the  econ- 
omist's meaning  to  the  layman,  if  it  were  ever  established,  than  utility  or  desira- 
bility, because  of  the  ethical  entanglements  of  the  latter  two. 


230  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

though  not  of  their  writings  on  utility.^  It  is  what  Bohm-Bawerk 
and  Wicksteed  call  the  *  fact  of  choice/  though  more  accurately  it 
is  a  fact  of  attitude,  for  we  should  say  that  choice  occurs  only  when 
two  or  more  responses  are  opposed. 

But  are  we  to  disinherit,  then,  the  subjective  facts  of  utility, 
which  have  bulked  so  large  in  all  discussions  of  value?  There  is  no 
occasion  to  do  so,  so  long  as  they  are  taken  only  for  what  they  are 
worth.  With  each  act  and  want,  there  is  usually  a  corresponding 
consciousness,  or  complex  of  sensation  and  images,  and  frequently 
this  phase  alone  is  observed.^  And  further,  the  final  usance  of  any 
commodity  or  service  is  ordinarily  attended  by  a  feeling  which 
we  call  pleasant  (or  relief  from  more  unpleasant) ;  which  feeling 
has  been  herein  ascribed,  in  the  main,  to  obscure  instinctive  reac- 
tions. These  feehng-reponses  are  also  reflexly  aroused  whenever 
the  main  want  rises  imaginally  to  consciousness  (as  when  one 
'  imagines  '  himself  eating  an  apple) . 

There  has  been  good  reason,  therefore,  for  the  economist's  con- 
ception of  utility  as  a  wholly  subjective  affair,  pretty  well  syn- 
onjonous  with  pleasure;  as  well  as  ground  for  the  allegation  that  a 
single  utihty  can  never  be  absolutely  measured,  since  pleasures  in 
different  minds,  or  even  in  the  same  mind  at  different  times,  can- 
not be  accurately  compared;  and  for  the  theory  of  the  hedonic 
calculus.  These  propositions  are  based  primarily  on  introspec- 
tion; but  consciousness  does  indeed  mirror  the  behavior-series 
with  sufi&cient  accuracy  so  that  the  theory  of  an  individual 
calculus  of  utilities  has  been  immensely  serviceable  toward  ex- 
plaining the  facts  of  value. 

But  many  disputes  over  the  verisimilitude  of  this  theory  are 
cleared  up  if  we  always  interpret  utility  in  objective  terms,  be- 
cause the  physiological  series  alone  is  complete.  As  soon  as  a 
response  or  want  has  been  exercised  a  number  of  times,  with  re- 
sults satisfactory  on  the  whole,  it  becomes  a  habit  involving  a 
minimum  of  calculation,  Hke  a  man's  buying  cigarettes,  —  it  may 
even  become  unconscious,  or '  subconscious,'  as  the  Freudians  say. 

^  Fisher  took  a  similar  stand  in  his  Mathematical  Investigations  in  the  theory  of 
Value  and  Prices  (1892),  p.  5,  though  many  of  his  later  value-transactions  are  car- 
ried out  in  the  subjective  realm. 

2  See  Ch.  VII,  above. 


UTILITY  AND  COST  23 1 

And  it  is  perfectly  clear  that  the  aura  of  feeling  originally  con- 
nected with  many  a  want  wears  away  until  one  feels  no  pleasure 
in  what  he  is  impelled  to  do.  What  he  does  is  effective  in  the  mar- 
ket; whether  or  not  he  '  knows  what  he  is  doing  '  or  *  Hkes  to  do 
it.'  It  is  physiological  forces  which  determine  his  acts,  not 
amounts  of  pleasure  or  pain  anticipated, — though  in  most  cases 
these  are  only  two  ways  of  saying  the  same  thing. 

The  riddles  connected  with  the  measurement  of  a  single  utility 
can  also  be  solved,  apparently,  by  the  objective  conception.  The 
strength  of  any  one  response  can  be  tested  by  measuring  in  terms 
of  foot-pounds  on  a  draw-bar,  or  calories  of  heat  given  off,  the 
amount  of  energy  the  subject  exerts  when  this  response  is  fully 
stimulated.  Labor  is  thus  the  original  yard  stick  of  utility,  as  well 
as  the  original  purchase  price  of  all  things;  and  it  is  probably  not 
true  that  we  are  forever  limited  in  our  judgments  of  utiUty  to  ob- 
servations of  choice  between  two  or  more  utilities. 

The  comparative  methods,  however,  are  still  available  and 
practically  are  easier  to  apply.  When  a  situation  calling  for 
choice  arises,  anyone  can  observe  which  response  was  stronger, — 
say  to  keep  a  dollar,  or  to  gain  admission  to  a  ball  game.  The 
fine  gradations  of  money  enable  our  wants  to  register  their 
strength  fairly  accurately.  If  we  want  to  compare  utilities  be- 
tween persons,  however,  through  either  the  money  or  the  labor 
standard,  we  must  compare  the  proportion  which  each  will  give 
of  his  total  stock  to  get  the  given  object,  since  obviously  the  richer 
will  spend  a  dollar  for  a  more  trivial  want  than  will  the  poorer. 
Individual  differences  in  sensibility  or  taste  will  express  them- 
selves, we  beHeve,  in  the  fractions  which  each  person  will  give  up 
of  his  total  stock,  and  so  they  need  not  be  reckoned  as  sources  of 
error.  In  other  words,  the  utiUty  of  $100  to  a  man  owning  $1000 
is  about  the  same  as  the  utility  of  $1000  to  a  man  owning  $10,000. 

These  suggestions  of  course  do  not  go  very  far  into  this  subtle 
question,  but  the  important  thing  is  that  when  we  think  of  utiHty 
in  terms  of  response-mechanisms,  such  problems  may  be  attacked 
with  the  rulers,  compasses  and  scales  that  are  common  to  all  scien- 
tific students,  which  measurements  cannot  possibly  be  applied  to 
utility  in  the  'mind,'  open  to  one  person  only,  that  is  seen  clear  or 


232  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

dim  according  to  the  time  of  day  or  what  the  subject  has  just  had 
to  eat.  When  there  is  no  other  evidence,  we  can  use  the  subjective 
report  to  infer  what  the  objective  situation  is,  somewhat  as 
physicists  have  to  use  appearances  to  infer  what  is  happening 
within  the  intangible  but  consistent  springs  of  their  phenomena. 
As  psychology  progresses,  we  shall  know  more  and  more  ac- 
curately what  to  infer,  in  objective  terms,  from  our  sensations, 
thoughts  and  feelings ;  but  we  know  already  that  an  individual's 
mental  experience  is  too  vague  and  incomplete  to  give  anyone  a 
true  view  of  the  whole  causal  sequence.  Whatever  error  the 
hedonic  calculus  may  contain,  by  reason  of  instincts  and  blind 
habits  which  are  not  fully  mirrored  in  consciousness,  we  shall 
avoid  by  attending  closely  to  the  behavior. 

'  Satisfaction  '  or  '  gratification  '  also  are  statable  objectively. 
Whenever  we  observe  a  response,  we  know  that  that  want  was  in 
some  degree  satisfied,  and  if  the  subject  is  thereupon  indifferent  to 
a  repetition  of  the  stimulus  we  can  say  the  want  was  completely 
satisfied,  —  for  the  time  being. 

Diminishing  Utility 

But  often,  as  everyone  knows,  a  single  stimulation  does  not 
completely  '  satisfy  '  the  want.  When  one  is  hungry  he  keeps  on 
eating  for  some  time,  if  food  continues  to  be  available,  instead  of 
going  off  to  do  something  else.  Listening  to  a  single  phonograph 
record,  or  making  a  single  throw  of  dice,  are  crude  examples  of 
experiences  which  are  usually  not  sufficiently  satisfying  to  cause 
the  response  to  lose  its  prepotency. 

And  the  response  gradually  becomes  weaker,  as  Jevons  and 
Menger  make  clear,  if  the  identical  stimulus  is  repeated.  The 
first  record,  or  the  first  loaf  of  bread,  at  a  given  time,  is  '  worth  '  a 
good  deal  to  the  subject;  its  utihty  is  high;  he  will  respond  quite 
energetically  to  it.  These  are  various  ways  of  saying  the  same 
thing.  But  as  a  second,  third  and  so  on,  loaf  or  record  is  offered 
him,  he  will  do  less  and  less  to  possess  them.  The  rapidity  with 
which  his  response  will  reach  zero  varies,  of  course,  with  the  com- 
modity and  with  the  physiological  state  of  the  subject,  but  pre- 
sumably a  normal  curve  could  be  established  for  each  commodity 


UTILITY  AND  COST  233 

with  reference  to  a  social  class,  with  sufficient  experimentation. 
Such  is  the  broad  principle  of  diminishing  utility,  which  has  meant 
so  much  for  the  theory  of  value. 

The  illustrations  from  common  experience  are  necessarily 
crude  and  inexact.  We  know  that  in  many  cases  the  '  appetite  ' 
for  phonograph  music  or  for  whatever  satisfaction  is  under  con- 
sideration, is  heightened  by  the  first  few  repetitions;  we  know  that 
over  a  stretch  of  time  tastes  are  altered  so  that  one  will  enjoy 
much  more  of  a  commodity  than  he  did  at  first.  This  is  because 
in  common  experience  we  are  dealing  each  time  with  a  community 
or  complex  of  responses,  whose  members  are  shifting  during  the 
experiment.  As  one  settles  himself  to  listen  to  music,  dormant 
responses  are  aroused,  and  distracting  impulses  subside,  so  that 
his  total  inclination  toward  the  music  is  presently  stronger  than 
it  was  at  first.  But  if  we  could  dissect  out  one  of  the  constituent 
responses  and  watch  it  in  isolation,  we  should  find  its  energy  di- 
minishing from  the  beginning,  if  the  stimulus  remained  constant. 

That  is  the  Weber-Fechner  law  of  psychology.  It  is  usually 
stated  from  the  standpoint  of  equal  increments  of  sensation  (just 
perceptible  differences),  in  which  case  the  objective  stimulus  is. 
said  to  increase  at  some  geometric  rate  in  order  to  give  the  simple 
arithmetic  increase  in  sensation.  For  example,  if  the  subject 
could  just  distinguish  the  weight  of  one  ounce  on  the  skin  from 
two  ounces,  he  could  probably  not  discriminate  between  two. 
ounces  and  three  ounces;  it  would  require  something  over  three, 
perhaps  four,  to  make  a  perceptible  difference.  This  proposition 
can  be  put  into  the  form  familiar  to  economists  by  saying  that 
there  is  diminishing  sensibiUty  per  ounce  of  stimulus.  The  funda- 
mental cause  of  the  phenomenon  is  presumably  fatigue  of  the 
response-mechanism  or  adaptation  in  the  sense-organ.^ 

The  connection  between  diminishing  utility  and  the  Weber- 
Fechner  law  has  often  been  affirmed  and  denied  by  authorities  of 
some  competence,  ever  since  the  principle  of  diminishing  utility 
was  introduced  into  economics.    The  Weber-Fechner  law  refers 

^  For  a  recent  experimental  study  and  biochemical  hypothesis  of  this  '  fatigue,' 
see  the  article  by  Selig  Hecht  above  referred  to,  "  Photic  Sensitivity  of  Ciona  In- 
testinalis,"  Jour.  Gen.  Physiol.,  i:  147-166  (1918). 


234  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

to  sensations;  has  it  anything  to  do  with  likes  and  dislikes?  One 
of  the  most  recent  pronouncements  by  an  eminent  psychological 
authority  is  that  of  Titchener: 

There  is  some  little  evidence  that  affection,  on  its  intensive  side,  obeys 
Weber's  Law.  ...  At  any  rate,  it  is  true  as  a  general  rule  that  what  gives  us 
pleasure  or  displeasure  is  roughly  proportional  to  our  income,  our  age  and 
status,  our  ambition,  our  standard  of  comfort.  If  I  am  starting  a  library 
with  a  hundred  volumes,  and  a  single  book  is  given  me,  I  am  as  pleased  — 
other  things  being  equal  — as  I  should  be  by  the  addition  of  ten  volumes  to  a 
library  of  a  thousand.  ...  All  these  things  sadly  need  experimental  con- 
firmation; but  there  seems  no  reason  why  affective  intensity  should  not,  and 
there  seems  to  be  some  evidence  that  in  fact  it  does,  follow  the  same  law  as 
the  intensity  of  sensation.' 

It  is  evident  from  his  illustrations,  however,  that  the  psy- 
chologist's knowledge  on  the  point  is  about  as  inexact  as  the 
economist's. 

The  difficulties  in  putting  the  two  principles  together  have 
been  mainly  two :  the  irregular  operation  of  diminishing  utiHty  in 
crude  economic  examples,  and  the  gap  which  psychologists  have 
usually  drawn  between  affection  (pleasure-pain)  and  sensation. 
The  first  stumbling  block,  of  the  irregularity  of  the  diminution, 
we  tried  to  account  for  a  moment  ago,  by  the  undoubted  shif tings 
which  are  constantly  taking  place  among  the  constituent-reflexes 
of  any  gross  response.  The  second  difficulty  is  removed  for  us 
by  our  conception  that  the  diffuse  and  unlocaHzed  consciousness 
called  affection  is  merely  the  sensation-correlates  of  instinctive 
inner  bodily  reactions.  In  other  words,  we  believe  '  feelings  '  of 
liking  and  disliking  are  composed  wholly  of  sensations,  and  so  of 
course  are  subject  to  Weber's  Law.  So  long  as  fresh,  recuperated 
positive  reflexes  continue  to  be  drawn  into  the  activity,  the  gen- 
eral zest  of  enjoyment  is  kept  up  or  increased,  but  that  is  a  matter 
of  successive  enjoyments,  not  the  repetition  of  an  identical 
stimulus.^ 

1  Textbook  of  Psychology,  pp.  259-260  (printing  of  1915)- 

2  See  above,  Ch.  X,  for  development  of  our  view  of  pleasure-pain.  It  does  not 
differ  much  from  Titchener's,  who  says  he  considers  affections  "  as  mental  proc- 
esses of  the  same  general  kind  as  sensations,  and  as  mental  processes  that  might,  in 
more  favorable  circumstances,  have  developed  into  sensations."  He  "  hazards  the 
guess  that  the  peripheral  organs  of  affection  are  the  free  afferent  nerve-endings." 
Ibid.,  pp.  260,  261. 


UTILITY  AND  COST  235 

Disutility  and  Cost 

What  now  of  (/inutility,  or  experiences  which  are  repugnant, 
yet  are  submitted  to  for  the  sake  of  a  more  than  counterbalancing 
utility?  Much  of  our  labor  —  that  is  to  say,  the  efforts  we  put 
forth  to  satisfy  our  wants  —  evidently  has  this  disagreeable 
quaUty;  and  the  restraint  we  put  on  urgent  present  desires,  as  in 
saving  our  money,  is  often  markedly  unpleasant.  This  negative 
side  of  the  hedonic  calculus  would  seem  to  make  our  behaviorist 
project  impractical.  If  we  see  a  man  digging  a  ditch  for  five 
dollars,  how  do  we  know  without  asking  his  report  on  his  con- 
sciousness, whether  the  experience  is  wholly  agreeable,  or  if  the 
pleasures  to  be  secured  by  the  five  dollars  are  only  just  sufficient 
to  overcome  the  repulsion  of  the  task? 

True,  the  digger's  introspection  would  be  the  quickest  way  to 
get  a  line  on  the  situation,  although  clearly  he  would  be  unable  to 
give  a  wholly  accurate  report  as  to  how  much  surplus  of  utility  he 
was  securing.  But  we  could  soon  make  some  progress  by  objec- 
tive methods,  if  we  removed  the  five  dollars  from  the  situation, 
and  observed  whether  he  continued  to  dig.  We  have  here  a  com- 
plex of  reactions,  stimulated  at  once,  whose  tendencies  are  in  op- 
posite directions.  The  bitter  must  be  taken  with  the  sweet,  or 
the  sweet  not  at  all,  and  the  stronger  reaction  prevails,  —  it  may 
be  either  toward  acceptance  or  rejection  of  the  complex  object 
offered.  Psychologists  frequently  experiment  by  offering  varying 
doses  of  reward  and  of  punishment,  distraction  or  irritation  insep- 
arably, and  they  can  conclude  more  accurately  than  can  the 
subject,  how  much  more  willing  he  is  than  unwilling  in  any  given 
combination. 

The  mechanics  of  the  matter  are,  of  course,  quite  intricate  and 
in  large  part  unknown,  but  we  can  be  reasonably  confident  that 
whenever  the  subject  feels  his  task  to  be  irksome,  yet  that  he  must 
stick  to  it  because  it  gets  him  something  he  wants  (enough  to 
overcome  the  repugnance),  his  total  energy  is  divided  between 
doing  the  job  and  trying  to  run  away  from  it.  When  the  task  is 
wholly  pleasant  there  is  no  such  division. 


236  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

When  the  situation  is  wholly  unpleasant,  if  there  are  no  uncon- 
scious habits  impelling  him  to  accept  it,  then  he  is  wholeheartedly 
avoiding  it.  . 

The  difference  between  utility  and  disutihty,  therefore,  is  not 
between  a  psychic  impression  and  the  energy  put  forth  to  realize 
it,  for  no  psychic  impression,  either  pleasant  or  unpleasant,  can 
occur  except  by  means  of  a  response  which  involves  release  of 
energy.  There  are  simply  positive  responses,  called  pleasant,  and 
negative  responses,  called  unpleasant.  The  difference  is  in  direc- 
tion of  the  agent's  efforts,  whether  he  is  seeking  or  tolerating  the 
stimulus,  or  is  avoiding,  repulsing  it.  When  both  are  operating 
simultaneously,  the  gross  result  will  not  indicate  the  strength  of 
each,  as  total  profits  of  a  business  does  not  reveal  which  depart- 
ments are  profitable  and  which  unprofitable,  but  the  elements  are 
nevertheless  statable  in  objective  terms  and  verifiable  by  objec- 
tive experiments. 

As  a  result  of  this  consideration  of  disutility,  we  must  ampHfy 
our  definition  of  want,  to  conform  to  common  usage  by  econ- 
omists. A  want  is,  —  not  merely  a  response-mechanism,  but  a 
response  in  the  positive  direction,  which  may  mean  efforts  to 
escape  from,  or  to  avoid,  an  unpleasant  situation  by  going  per- 
haps into  one  which  is  only  less  unpleasant. 

Ultimate  Cost 

The  ultimate  nature  of  cost  is  now  seen  to  be  definable  in  either 
one  of  two  ways,  which  have  been  confused  as  one.  "Efforts  and 
sacrifices"  are  usually  considered  the  real  costs  of  production, 
whether  in  work  or  in  saving.  But  sacrifice,  if  it  means  pain  or 
unpleasantness,  is  merely  one  kind  of  '  effort '  or  response; 
wholly  pleasurable  responses  also  involve  effort,  in  the  sense  of 
depletion  of  energy.  Some  writers  again,  such  as  Green  and 
Davenport,  emphasize  '  opportunity-cost '  (to  the  individual, 
though  not  of  production  as  a  whole),  which  is  no  positive  pain 
but  only  the  foregoing  of  one  specific  pleasure  in  order  to  accept 
another  one.^   A  recent  discussion  asserts  (apparently  following 

^  D.  I.  Green,  "Pain-Cost  and  Opportunity-Cost,"  Quar.  Jour.  Econ.  8:  218- 
229  (1893). 


UTILITY  AND  COST  237 

out  Wicksteed's  line  of  thought)  that  cost  is  always  ultimately 
the  most  urgent  excluded  desire.^ 

There  are,  therefore,  three  possible  situations  as  to  cost,  de- 
pending on  the  feeling-reactions  of  the  subject,  and  no  one  def- 
inition of  cost  will  be  adequate  to  all. 

1.  The  activity  of  production  may  be  felt  as  wholly  unpleas- 
ant; that  is,  the  avoiding  responses  aroused  would  immediately 
put  a  stop  to  it  if  there  were  not  the  pull  of  anticipatory  responses 
connected  with  the  reward. 

2.  The  work  undertaken  may  be  rather  pleasant  in  itself,  re- 
gardless of  the  reward,  but  some  other  activity  would  be  more 
attractive  if  the  reward  had  not  been  attached  to  the  first.  Really 
these  two  situations  differ  only  in  degree,  for  there  is  always  some- 
thing else  we  prefer  to  do  when  what  we  are  doing  is  irksome;  and 
no  matter  how  pleasant  our  task  may  be,  we  cannot  recall  that 
other,  more  agreeable  experience,  foregone  without  a  pang.  So 
that  opportunity-  and  pain-cost  merge  together;  both  refer  to 
counter-responses  which  must  be  overcome  by  reward  if  the  costly 
work  is  to  be  imdertaken.  In  both  cases,  by  objective  experiments 
the  subject's  attitudes  can  be  discovered  and  the  mystery  of  his 
mind,  his  '  feeling,'  is  not  essential. 

3.  The  work  is  the  thing  the  subject  prefers  to  do,  regardless  of 
reward,  hence  there  is  no  pain-cost.  Some  home-gardening  and 
many  other  profitable  recreations  are  of  this  nature.  Although 
*  labor,'  in  the  form  of  exertion,  is  the  price  or  rather  the  correlate 
of  all  utihty,  yet  labor  is  not  always  irksome.  Ultimate  cost  is 
properly  —  and  usually  —  connected  with  counter-responses 
pulling  against  the  costly  activity,  and  these  coimter-responses 
are  partly  pleasant  (seeking  something  else),  partly  impleasant 
(merely  toward  avoiding  this  experience).  We  can  call  these  re- 
spectively opportunity-  and  pain-costs,  remembering  that  prob- 
ably every  instance  of  costly  production  combines  the  two. 

Psychic  Income 

The  term  *  psychic  income,'  popularized  among  economists  by 
Fetter  and  Fisher,  may  now  be  noticed.   Psychic  income  is  ap- 

^  M.  Roche- Agussol,  La  Psychologie  Economique  chez  les  Anglo-Americains 
(Montpellier,  1918). 


238  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

plied  to  wholly  subjective  entities,  —  ''  Desirable  results  produced 
in  the  realm  of  feeling,"  according  to  Fetter;^  "Sensations, 
thoughts,  feelings,  voHtions,  and  all  psychical  events,"  according 
to  Fisher.2  The  latter  distinguishes  these  subjective  results  from 
"enjoyable  objective  services,"  as  of  nourishment,  housing  and 
warming,  and  says: 

It  is  usually  recognized  by  economists  that  we  must  not  stop  at  the  stage 
of  this  objective  income.  There  is  one  more  step  before  the  process  is  com- 
plete. Indeed,  no  objective  services  are  of  significance  to  man  except  as 
they  are  preparatory  to  subjective  satisfactions.' 

Our  objections  to  this  concentration  on  the  subjective  aspect  have 
been  sufficiently  set  forth.  We  agree  with  critics  of  the  '  psychic 
accounting '  economists  that  their  scheme  is  essentially  the 
hedonic  calculus  of  Bentham,  though  we  consider  this  fact  much 
less  damaging  to  either  party  than  do  the  critics.  The  question  of 
the  reahty  of  refined  psychic  bookkeeping  in  the  individual  mind, 
we  shall  deal  with  in  the  following  chapter  on  the  valuation 
process. 

1  Economic  Principles,  p.  27. 

^  Nature  of  Capital  and  Income,  p.  166. 

'  Ibid.,  p.  165.   Cf.  Fetter,  Principles  (1904),  Ch.  VI. 


CHAPTER  XVII 

PSYCHOLOGY  OF  THE  VALUATION  PROCESS 

'  Valuation  '  is  here  used  to  denote  the  process  of  balancing 
utilities  against  one  another,  leading  to  the  judgment  that  A  is 
wanted  so  many  times  as  much  as  B.  '  Choice  '  we  use  in  the  nar- 
rower sense  of  mere  preference,  and  hence  signifying  not  '  how 
many  times,'  but '  A  is  preferred  to  B.'  '  Utility  '  should  perhaps 
always  be  used  in  the  final  sense,  in  which  case  it  is  the  ultimate 
consiuner  who  is  debating;  but  there  would  be  some  point  in 
speaking  of  *  derived  utility  '  —  the  want  of  a  merchant,  derived 
from  the  ultimate  wants  of  the  consumer  —  as  behind  the  mer- 
chant's money  demand.  Our  problem  is  to  translate  the  econ- 
omist's concept  of  valuation  into  modern  psychological  terms. 

Values  depend  upon  individual  acts,  choices  and  valuations. 
But  by  no  means  all  economic  acts  can  accurately  be  called 
choices,  for  some  are  not  the  results  of  calculation.  There  is  much 
economic  behavior,  from  taking  the  trolley  car  to  laying  a  brick 
wall,  which  flows  from  habitual  responses  that  are  unopposed  and 
direct,  like  the  animal's  response  to  food.  A  Benthamite  might 
argue  at  length  that  it  is  a  choice  between  doing  and  not  doing, 
etc.,  but  our  point  is  that  such  usage  would  fail  to  discriminate 
the  important  situation  which  arises  when  there  are  two  or  more 
opposing  responses  stimulated  at  the  same  time.  The  subject's 
'  mind,'  that  is,  his  stream  of  images,  reflects  subjectively  the 
battle  going  on  in  his  nerve-circuits.  It  is,  as  usual,  the  latter 
aspect  of  this  process  of  calculation  which  we  shall  try  to  survey, 
although  unconscious  calculation  (of  which  we  get  a  hint  in  our 
dreams)  is  presumably  a  much  less  important  economic  factor 
than  are  the  unconscious  direct,  unopposed,  habitual  responses. 

We  have  indicated  our  conception  of  the  mechanism  of  choice 
in  connection  with  our  discussion  of  the  will,  and  of  McDougall's 
idea  of  '  reasonableness.'  ^  It  is  parallel  to  reasoning.  An  ambig- 

1  See  above,  Ch.  XII. 
239 


240  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

uous  situation  arouses  antagonistic,  or  to,  some  extent  mutually 
exclusive,  motives.  Overt  action  is  inhibited  while  the  various 
responses  successively  predominate  on  the  imaginative  behavior- 
level,  and  thus  explore  the  '  consequences  '  of  each  possible  choice 
so  far  as  they  are  *  foreseen  '  by  the  agent. 

This  foreseeing,  of  course,  depends  wholly  on  whatever  associa- 
tions the  subject  has  from  his  own  past,  and  so  he  makes  perhaps 
the  most  egregious  blunders  as  to  what  the  actual  consequences  of 
any  choice  would  be.  Pavlov's  dog,  after  training,  '  foresees  ' 
that  he  will  soon  be  chewing  food  when  the  red  light  appears,  but 
he  may  have  completely  misjudged  the  experimenter's  intention. 
But  the  imaginal  consequences  or  effects,  in  their  turn,  are  stimuli 
which  arouse  other  motives  of  the  subject,  which  at  the  beginning 
were  not  seen  to  be  involved.  When  these  are  aroused  (to  the  low 
tension  of  images) ,  they  lend  their  strength  to  the  response  which 
has  in  a  way  '  promised  '  to  gratify  them.  Their  strength  means 
here,  not  voting  power,  but  energy  toward  moving  the  body  in  a 
certain  way. 

Since  most  motives  have  some  hedonic  feeling  correlated  with 
them,  the  process  of  reflection  is  in  considerable  measure  a  cal- 
culus of  pleasures  and  pains.  The  responses  correlated  with 
pleasant  feeling  mostly  urge  our  body  one  way;  those  of  unpleas- 
antness in  another.  But  this  parallelism,  as  we  have  seen,  is  not 
complete.  Some  unpleasant  motives  like  our  '  sense  of  grim  duty  ' 
are  physiologically  effective  in  driving  us  in  the  line  of  greatest 
resistance,  according  to  the  subjective  view,  and  so  the  hedonic 
calculation  does  not  exhaust  the  situation.  Only  a  full  observa- 
tion of  the  facts  of  behavior,  including  minute  processes  within 
the  body,  would  reveal  the  whole  story  of  our  every-day  choices 
or  valuations. 

When  we  come  to  the  market  place,  we  find  dealers  absorbed  in 
calculations  which  are  reasoning,  discovery,  invention,  rather 
than  choosing  among  utilities.  Their  desire  to  make  the  largest 
profit  possible,  within  the  rules  of  the  game,  is  fairly  constant; 
the  problem  is  how  to  make  it.  Their  calculations  take  into  ac- 
count, not  merely  all  manner  of  purely  physical  facts,  like  rains  in 
the  cotton-belt,  but  also  numerous  facts  of  consumers'  desires,  so 


PSYCHOLOGY  OF  THE  VALUATION  PROCESS  241 

tar  as  the  dealers  can  discover  them.  Philosophically  it  can  be 
said  that  the  dealers  respond  to  psychical  facts,  to  consumers' 
future  choices,  but  proximately  they  are  responding  to  black 
marks  on  paper  and  sounds  of  voices,  from  which  they  infer  the 
future  trends,  like  the  dog  drawing  crude '  inferences '  as  to  future 
eating  delights  from  the  red  light  stimulus.  Dealers  in  the  market 
respond  generally  to  the  broad,  habitual  experience  that  a  larger 
supply  can  be  sold  only  at  a  lower  price  per  unit  than  can  a  small 
supply.^ 

Utility  Curves  and  Demand  Curves 

We  shall  return  to  the  subject  of  calculation  presently,  but  let 
us  now  carry  forward  the  connection  of  utility  with  exchange 
value. 

The  protest  that  demand  does  not  run  wholly  parallel  to  utility, 
because  the  rich  man's  offer  of  a  dollar  does  not  represent  the 
same  utility  as  the  poor  man's  offer  of  a  dollar,  and  that  it  is 
therefore  misleading  to  speak  of  exchange  value  ever  being  deter- 
mined chiefly  by  utility  ("one  side  of  the  scissors  doing  the  cut- 
ting," or  of  production  being  directed  by  utility,  as  distinguished 
from  demand)  has  been  frequently  made,  and  so  far  as  it  goes  it 
can  hardly  be  questioned.  One  might  still  argue  that  the  rich 
man's  demand  may  be  more  important  to  society  as  a  whole,  be- 
cause his  contribution  to  production  is  perhaps  greater  than  the 
poor  man's,  but  either  proposition  seems  sufficiently  obvious  so 
that  we  will  take  both  for  granted. 

But  supposing  incomes  equal,  to  what  extent  is  the  declining 
composite  demand-curve  dependent  upon  declining  individual 
utility-curves  of  the  same  general  shape?  Expositions  of  value 
usually  treat  the  aggregate  demand  curve  as  the  summation,  in 
monetary  terms,  of  the  utility  curves  of  consumers,  and  ascribe 
declining  demand  chiefly  to  diminishing  utility.  In  our  opinion, 
too  much  credit  is  thus  given  to  the  diminishing  utiHty  principle 

1  For  important  qualifications  of  this  proposition,  see  G.  B.  Dibblee,  Laws  of 
Supply  and  Demand  (1912);  Taussig,  "Is  Market  Price  Determinate?"  Quar.  Jour. 
Econ.,  May,  1921.  Dibblee  gives  an  interesting  and  suggestive  and  somewhat 
heterodox  discussion  of  psychological  factors  in  supply  and  demand  based  on  sub- 
jective subtleties,  with  much  appeal,  however,  to  business  events,  somewhat  in  the 
manner  of  Wicksteed. 


242  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

in  its  simples!  form,  and  not  enough  to  the  technical  facts  of  dif- 
ferent uses  of  any  commodity.  The  decHning  price-offer  per  unit 
of  an  increasing  supply  of  potatoes  or  candy,  as  well  as  of  steel 
ingots,  seems  to  us  to  be  due  rather  to  the  less  urgent  uses  to 
which  further  units  of  a  stock  can  be  put  (including  speculative 
uses  in  the  future,  which  play  so  large  a  part  in  the  actual  elas- 
ticity of  any  market  with  reference  to  price  and  supply),  than  to 
gradual  saturation  of  any  one  class  of  consumers'  wants,  which  is 
what  diminishing  utility  is  usually  thought  to  refer  to.  Of  course 
the  less  urgent  wants  are  gradually  satiable  also,  at  a  given  time, 
so  that  diminishing  utility  operates  throughout  the  whole  range, 
but  that  there  are  several  wants  of  different  urgency,  any  of 
which  can  be  satisfied  by  the  same  commodity,  is  a  tremendously 
important  factor  in  demand,  which  in  an  exact  analysis  should  not 
be  lumped  together  as  '  diminishing  utility.' 

It  should  be  remembered  also  that  these  '  less  urgent  uses  '  are 
sharply  divided  into  final  uses  and  productive  uses.  A  less  urgent 
final  use  for  water,  say,  is  for  bathing;  while  a  less  urgent  use  for 
steel  is  in  a  machine-part  where  cheaper  iron  will  do  nearly  as 
well.  Practically  all  production  goods  show  this  '  diminishing 
productivity  '  in  a  series  of  different  uses,  and  this  hierarchy  of 
uses  of  producers'  goods,  as  well  as  the  two  diminutions  of  utility 
above-mentioned  of  the  consumption-goods  into  which  they 
finally  pass,  plays  its  part  in  determining  the  shape  of  the  de- 
mand curve. 

Another  criticism  to  be  made  against  the  usual  treatment  of 
utiUty  by  the  mathematical  or  '  psychological '  schools,  relates  to 
the  method  of  infinitesimal  increments.  These  writers  often  ap- 
ply mathematical  formulae  to  various  problems  in  utiHty  in  such 
a  way  that  many  readers  believe  the  writers  assume  that  any 
individual  man  does  in  fact  make  indefinitely  minute  calculations. 
Ridicule  of  such  an  assumption  is  of  course  the  easiest  possible 
task,  and  this  misconception  of  the  mathematical  economists' 
work  is  in  considerable  degree  responsible  for  all  the  controversies 
over  the  hedonic  calculus. 

Yet  economists  have  long  said  that  wants  are  for  concrete 
goods,  such  as  motor  cars,  and  not  for  miscroscopic  units  of  pleas- 


PSYCHOLOGY  OF  THE  VALUATION  PROCESS  243 

ure,  while  Jevons  pointed  out  the  highly  significant  proposition 
that  the  actions  of  large  numbers  of  people  show  a  regularity 
which  individual  acts  do  not  exemplify.  This  inertia  of  large 
groups  of  mortal  behavior-facts  has  always  been  the  basis  of 
mathematical  calculations  on  mortaHty,  suicide  and  other  vital 
phenomena,  by  statisticians;  and  it  is  likewise  fundamental  to 
mathematical  economics,  as  Marshall  and  Pigou  well  know. 

To  accuse  mathematical  economists  of  assuming  an  impossible 
man  is  just  as  reasonable  as  to  accuse  a  vital  statistician  of  sup- 
posing that  any  inhabitant  who  moves  from  the  First  Ward  to  the 
Second  Ward  will  live  just  1.253  years  longer  by  reason  of  his 
change.  Aggregate  market  demands,  like  aggregate  mortaHty, 
accidents,  and  ahnost  any  other  vital  quantities,  vary  by  in- 
definitely small  amounts  with  changes  in  controlling  factors  Uke 
price  or  fashion  or  bacterial  content  of  the  water  supply.  And  so 
demand-curves  are  continuous  and  may  be  investigated  by  the 
most  elaborate  calculus,  with  the  certainty  that  those  folks  who 
will  pay  forty  cents  as  readily  as  twenty  cents  a  pound  for  sugar, 
and  other  similar  irregularities,  will  be  offset  by  other  '  errors  '  in 
the  opposite  direction.  Any  natural  science  depends  on  exactly 
the  same  procedure.  But  individual  utiHty  curves  are  not  amen- 
able to  such  handling;  our  straight  perpendicular  lines  of  consider- 
ably differing  lengths  express  more  accurately  the  situation  there. 
If  a  few  simple  analogies  were  thus  employed,  and  '  utility  '  used 
more  carefully,  mathematical  economics  would  be  better  appre- 
ciated. 

Substitution;  Consumer's  Surplus 

There  are  two  kinds  of  substitution  relevant  to  value.  A  good 
may  satisfy  any  of  two  or  more  wants,  or  one  want  may  be  satis- 
fied by  each  of  several  goo^.  Whichever  of  the  three  causes  men- 
tioned above  operates  to  make  utility  diminish,  if  several  units  of 
any  good  are  available  (say  pounds  of  potatoes),  the  subject 
need  not  give  more  for  any  unit  than  he  finds  it  necessary  to  give 
in  order  to  satisfy  his  least  urgent  want  among  the  wants  that  can 
be  satisfied  with  the  units  available,  or  at  the  price  ruling.  This 
want  is  the  marginal  utility  (Dd  in  the  diagram),  with  which  con- 
ception the  reader  is  assumed  to  be  familiar.   The  possibility  of 


244 


ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 


substitution  is  necessary,  it  is  seen,  as  well  as  the  principle  of 
diminishing  utility,  in  order  that  marginal  utility  may  determine 
value,  for  if  one  must  take  or  leave  all  the  units,  his  action  is  ruled 
by  total  utiHty,  —  by  all  the  uses  that  can  be  made  of  the  stock. 
Now  since  he  pays  for  each  unit  according  to  his  marginal 
utihty,  there  is  said  to  be  a  consxmier's  surplus  or  rent,  consisting 
of  the  gross  amount  by  which  all  the  prior  utiHties  exceed  the 
marginal.   In  the  diagram,  it  is  the  sum  of  Qa,  Rb  and  Sc.   The 


b 

c 

a R._      s  ^ 


.  .  B 

UtiHties  and  fractions  thereof  are  commensurable  absolutely,  we 
believe,  in  terms  of  fractions  of  his  total  energy  which  the  subject 
is  prepared  to  expend  in  each  case;  but  more  practically  they  are 
measured  by  the  diminishing  sums  of  money  which  he  will  give 
for  the  successive  units  of  the  good. 

An  important  question  is,  what  does  our  psychology  say  as  to 
the  reality  of  consimiers'  surplus?  Or  rather,  is  it  as  accurately 
expressible  as  the  diagrams  represent,  or  may  we  only  say  that  in 
many  cases  one  feels  vaguely  that  he  has  *  got  more  than  his 
money's  worth '  ? 

Properly  understood,  we  believe  the  diagrams  tell  a  true  story. 
It  is  obvious,  of  course,  that  if  you  add  up  the  total  utility  of  all 


PSYCHOLOGY  OF  THE  VALUATION  PROCESS  245 

the  things  which  anybody  purchases,  the  sum  will  far  exceed  his 
total  purchasing  power,  because  what  he  '  saves  '  of  the  amount 
he  would  be  willing  to  pay  for  the  first  articles  he  buys,  he  can  use 
toward  purchase  of  the  next  articles.  His  total  available  energy 
remains  constant,  and  the  mental  correlates  (sensations  and 
images)  are  about  constant  in  quantity  too.  A  series  of  good 
bargains  will,  however,  take  the  agent  out  of  a  pain  economy  into 
a  pleasure  economy;  that  is,  his  activities  become  on  the  whole 
more  pleasant,  because  he  is  able  to  avoid  the  extremes  of  misery 
which  privation  of  economic  goods  may  mean.  This  calculation, 
to  be  sure,  is  static;  his  wants  are  constantly  changing  and  may 
put  him  back  into  a  pain  economy  again,  as  he  becomes  dis- 
contented with  the  life  which  he  formerly  thought  would  be  so 
satisfying.  A  want  based  on  prestige,  as  most  wants  for  diamonds, 
would  probably  disappear  entirely,  if  the  good  got  very  cheap, 
and  then  of  course  any  possibility  of  consumer's  surplus  would  be 
gone.  But  at  any  one  time  the  utilities  we  represent  by  our  lines 
are  grounded  in  solid  physiological  mechanisms.  Our  subject  can 
be  coimted  on  to  exert  himself  to  the  full  amount  of  Aa  for  one 
pound  of  potatoes,  if  necessary;  and  if  he  gets  it  for  AQ  he  has 
saved  Qa  in  energy  for  something  else,  although  he  may  never 
think  about  this  saving. 

As  in  so  many  other  instances,  the  conscious  report  of  con- 
sumer's surplus  is  incomplete.  To  ascertain  this  surplus  exactly 
it  is  necessary  to  know  how  much  the  agent  would  pay  (do)  for  a 
given  unit  if  he  had  to,  in  order  to  get  it.  But  we  rarely  ask  ourselves 
that  question;  we  are  accustomed  to  buying  matches  at  a  penny  a 
box,  bread  at  a  dime  a  loaf,  water  at  four  dollars  a  year,  and  sel- 
dom '  realize  '  that  we  are  getting  an  enormous  surplus  in  utiUty 
on  them.  But  the  responses  indicated  by  our  diagrams  are  there, 
just  the  same,  ready  to  deliver  certain  proportions  of  our  resources 
any  time  the  situation  calls  for  extreme  payments,  and  so  the 
surpluses  might  be  called  '  implicit.'  ^ 

^  Dibblee  argues  that  demand-curves  are  incalculable,  because  the  subject  can- 
not foretell  what  he  will  give  untU  the  situation  arises,  — for  example  for  a  major 
operation  for  his  child.  This  is  true  in  the  subjective  realm,  but  the  power  that  will 
be  exerted  in  the  test  is  already  latent  in  his  bodily  structures,  like  the  steam  and 
mechanisms  of  an  engine.  It  is  these  existent  but  latent  responses  .which  utility  and 
demand-curves  refer  to. 


246  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

Differences  in  the  Accuracy  of  Calculations 

As  we  have  reiterated  in  many  connections,  there  is  no  a  priori 
rule  as  to  the  accuracy  of  any  individual's  calculations.  None  can 
be  completely  accurate,  for  nobody  knows  all  the  consequences 
which  will  follow  from  any  of  his  acts.  Each  of  us  is  liable  to  be 
deceived  as  to  the  durability  or  styUshness  of  the  clothes  we  buy. 
If  any  theorems  of  the  accepted  economic  principles  are  depend- 
ent on  the  assumption  of  human  infallibility  in  inferring  the 
ultimate  consumption,  utilities  from  concrete  goods  (as  Veblen 
and  his  sympathizers  appear  to  believe) ,  of  course  those  theorems 
are  doomed.  This  school  of  critics  further  insinuate  that  if 
people  get  enjoyments  which  are  based  on  false  suppositions,  our 
assumption  of  human  '  rationahty  '  breaks  down  doubly.  The 
consumer  of  a  certain  medicine,  for  example,  beheves  himself 
benefited  by  it,  but  physiological  research  may  some  day  prove 
that  the  stuff  really  harmed  him.  That  consumer,  Veblen  would 
say,  is  not  getting  a  real  satisfaction,  and  he  is  a  living  protest 
against  the  hollowness  of  economic  theory. 

Economics  would  indeed  be  in  a  bad  way  if  it  refused  to  deal 
with  any  want  until  it  had  explored  all  the  '  implications '  of  the 
want  and  found  them  scientifically  justified.  The  '  rationality  ' 
which  we  do  assume  is  merely  some  ability  tdylearn  connections 
between  present  goods  or  situations  (such  as  land,  iron  ore,  oil 
wells,  teddy  bears),  and  future  final  utilities,  which  faculty  every- 
one (especially  the  associationists)  has  always  known  to  be 
lamentably  imperfect.  That  economist  who  is  supposed  to  assume 
an  infalKbly  calculating  subject  is  merely  a  man  of  straw. 

At  the  same  time  it  is  true  that  many  of  the  propositions  of  eco- 
nomics, particularly  those  optimistic  ones  as  to  relative  profits 
depending  on  proportionate  services  rendered,  if  put  into  absolute 
form  must  have  the  proviso  "This  is  what  would  happen  if 
people  knew  enough."  That  is  the  '  economic  man  ';  an  abstrac- 
tion from  reality  but  no  more  discreditable  to  the  economist  than 
the  spherical  earth  is  to  the  geographer. 

We  have  not  gone  into  the  psychology  of  individual  differences 
even  so  far  as  it  is  now  attainable,  but  as  knowledge  of  this  sub- 


PSYCHOLOGY  OF  THE  VALUATION  PROCESS  247 

ject  develops  it  will  be  highly  useful  to  economic  theory  in  refer- 
ence to  human  ability  to  reason  from  ends  to  means,  and  vice 
versa.  Our  investigation  did,  nevertheless,  disclose  some  partic- 
ulars with  which  accuracy  of  calculation  varies  between  indi- 
viduals. 

Most  obvious  is  simple  differences  in  knowledge,  which  dif- 
ferences are  due  partly  to  variations  in  innate  learning  capacity, 
and  partly  to  discrepancies  in  opportunity.  How  many  "mute 
inglorious  Miltons"  are  smothered  by  lack  of  opportunities  is  a 
large  question  on  which  research  is  going  forward  in  many  direc- 
tions, but  there  can  be  little  question  that  the  most  brilliant  genius 
would  not  learn  a  great  deal  of  the  world  about  him  without  the 
facilities  of  subsistence  and  interchange  of  experiences,  by  word  of 
mouth  and  by  symbols,  which  have  been  laboriously  developing 
through  the  millenia.  To  illustrate  by  a  common  contrast,  the 
country  boy  coming  to  the  city  recognizes  Uttle  but  agricultural 
possibilities  inherent  in  a  vacant  lot;  whilst  after  he  has  made  his 
way  up  in  the  business  world,  the  knowledge  thus  accumulated 
enables  him  to  deduce  manifold  possible  uses  of  the  same  lot.  It 
is  the  old  proposition  that  good  reasoning  in  a  given  situation  de- 
pends first  of  all  upon  a  stock  of  knowledge,  or  associations,, 
relevant  to  that  situation. 

Now  most  of  our  knowledge  we  get  second-hand,  from  tradi- 
tion, teaching,  or  custom.  Otherwise  advancement  of  knowledge 
would  never  be  possible.  We  get  it  moreover  in  a  condensed  form, 
and  we  have  no  conception  of  a  large  part  of  the  '  assumptions  ' 
which  are  implicit  in  our  behavior.  The  farmer  or  the  carpenter 
knows  few  scientific  facts  about  the  physical  forces  that  he  is 
successfully  manipulating.  Each  art  is  made  up  of  thousands  of 
details,  become  customary,  which  were  once  in  some  sense  dis- 
covered. The  individual  farmer  could  often  give  no  reason,  or 
only  a  foolish  one,  for  cross-breeding  stock  or  rotating  crops;  and 
of  course  numerous  parts  of  the  procedure  of  everyone  could  not 
finally  be  justified  on  grounds  of  efficiency,  if  everything  were 
known. 

But  with  all  due  allowance  to  the  institutional  economists  for 
mistaken  customs,  there  is  a  good  deal  more  scientific  ground  for 


248  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

our  behavior  than  there  is  of  conscious  reasoning  it  out,  because 
all  manner  of  the  ready-made  customs  or  conclusions  which  we 
adopt,  do  happen  to  be  sound,  and  well-adapted  to  our  practical 
use,  —  so  that  there  is  no  occasion  for  us  to  inquire  back  of  them. 
Such  is  the  case  with  logarithmic  tables  and  with  rotation  of 
crops;  if  the  individual  accepts  them  blindly,  that  does  not  argue 
against  their  adaptiveness.  There  is  a  fairly  steady  sifting  of 
customary  art  in  the  direction  of  efficiency,  —  first  because  crit- 
ical and  experimenting  individuals  are  always  demonstrating 
improved  processes;  and  second,  because  as  in  the  cat's  learning 
the  puzzle-box,  the  essential  steps  toward  satisfaction  must  al- 
ways be  gone  through,  while  the  unessential  are  occasionally 
omitted  and  so  do  not  so  strongly  tend  to  become  fixed  habits.^ 

And  hence,  if  people  in  buying  land  do  not  always  go  through 
all  the  Hghtning-calculations  of  utiHties,  and  draw  all  the  infer- 
ences which  the  marginal  utility  theory,  according  to  dissenters 
calls  for,  it  does  not  follow  that  the  ultimate  consumers'  utilities 
are  so  remotely  connected  with  the  value  of  present  goods  such  as 
land.  Nor  is  it  necessary  to  this  theory  to  suppose  that  all  the 
calculations  which  are  in  fact  made  by  a  given  agent,  would  have 
been  made  by  him  if  he  had  been  bom  into  a  primitive  society.  Of 
course  the  customs  or  institutions  of  his  society  have  contributed 
to  his  mental  equipment,  but  the  active  factor  in  value  is  not  a 
shadowy  institution  but  the  man  in  the  market,  a  rational  agent, 
whose  behavior  is  influenced,  according  to  the  ordinary  learning 
processes,  by  what  he  sees  other  men  doing. 

Another  cause  of  variabiUty  in  the  accuracy  of  valuations  lies  in 
the  apparent  fact  that  certain  desires  seem  to  be  more  importu- 
nate in  some  people  than  in  others.  When  some  men  are  warned 
in  the  plainest  terms  what  will  come  of  their  drinking,  or  other 
short-sighted  conduct,  they  are  nevertheless  unable  to  resist  the 
impulse.  Some  of  us  are  '  carried  away  '  by  anger,  shame,  etc., 
more  than  others.  This  means  that  certain  responses  —  in  given 
individuals  —  are  so  strong  when  aroused,  relative  to  others 
which  are  then  active  only  imaginatively,  that  the  future  utilities 
are  very  heavily  discovmted,  and  the  agent  is  less  *  rational,'  in 

1  See  discussion  of  this  point,  suggested  by  Watson,  above,  in  Ch.  XI. 


PSYCHOLOGY  OF  THE  VALUATION  PROCESS  249 

the  sense  of  being  farsighted,  than  his  competitors  are  in  similar 
external  circumstances. 

Finally,  there  are  two  more  sources  of  variability  among  in- 
dividuals, which  we  have  noticed  in  connection  with  reasoning: 
the  habit  of  making  thorough  diagnosis  of  new  situations,  and 
innate  reasoning  ability.  Careful  procedure  in  considering  all 
aspects  of  a  problem  before  action  is  clearly  useful,  and  it  con- 
stitutes part  of  the  value  of  any  scientific  training.  Variability  in 
power  to  reason,  we  are  just  beginning  to  learn  about,  through  cer- 
tain of  the  intelUgence  tests  in  which  success  does  not  depend  on 
formal  education  or  home  culture. 

What  the  average  human  accuracy  is  in  valuation,  therefore, 
the  psychologist  has  no  means  of  determining  in  general  terms. 
It  depends  on  the  complexity  of  the  situation  and  the  information 
of  the  valuer,  etc.  Economic  statistics  (behavior  facts)  in  the 
various  circumstances,  as  in  purchases  of  land  or  teddy  bears,  are 
the  best  guides  to  theory  on  this  point. 

Other  Factors  in  Value;  Competition 

Besides  the  psychological  principles  we  have  been  discussing 
there  are  many  technological  factors  which  play  large  roles  in  the 
determination  of  particular  values.  Diminishing  returns,  increas- 
ing returns,  joint  supply,  joint  demand,  are  familiar  names  for 
analyses  of  some  of  these  important  habits  of  matter.  One  of  the 
most  significant  is  the  principle  of  proportionality,  or  diminishing 
productivity,  which  has  been  expounded  so  fully  by  Professor 
Carver.  There  are  natural  (and  variable)  proportions  in  which 
water  and  other  elements  can  be  used  in  agriculture,  for  example; 
if  the  farmer  has  '  plenty  '  of  water  relative  to  his  other  materials, 
he  would  give  nothing  for  more  water,  even  though  he  would  give 
almost  anything  rather  than  be  deprived  of  all  that  he  has.  In  an 
irrigating  country,  on  the  other  hand,  most  of  the  farmers'  quar- 
rels and  litigation  are  concerned  with  the  water.  The  water  has 
considerable  economic  value,  in  the  latter  case.  We  can  do  more, 
in  terms  of  final  utilities,  with  additional  units  of  the  relatively 
scarce  materials  than  with  more  of  the  relatively  abimdant;  and 
we  gradually  learn  to  react  toward  them  economically, — to  strive 


250  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

hardest  to  possess  these  things  that  will  '  produce  '  the  greatest 
utilities.  But  as  our  concern  is  primarily  with  psychological  fac- 
tors in  economics,  we  shall  make  no  attempt  to  cover  these  tech- 
nological phases  of  value. 

The  psychological  roots  of  competition  are,  however,  of  much 
interest. 

It  is  from  the  general  interaction  of  all  wants  with  the  complex 
environment  that  economic  value  emerges.  We  may  think  of  non- 
economic  values,  in  the  sense  of  comparisons  among  such  wants  as 
are  called  ethical,  religious,  political,  social,  etc.  It  is  the  same 
question.  How  many  of  A  are  wanted  as  much  as  B?  We  speak 
often  of  a  '  choice  between  evils,'  and  of  '  this  picture  being  pret- 
tier than  that.'  Economic  goods  are  wanted  ultimately  for  all 
these  purposes,  so  that  the  earmark  of  things  economic  is  simply 
the  convenient  and  arbitrary  one  of  '  goods  which  are  ordinarily 
peaceably  exchanged.' 

But  '  peaceably  '  is  a  relative  term,  for  there  are  numerous 
forms  of  human  conflict,  including  economic  competition.  The 
main  interest  for  us  is  in  the  question,  how  do  limits  upon  com- 
petition progress?  The  human  physiological  endowment,  placed 
in  our  natural  world,  inevitably  gives  rise  to  some  competition. 
First,  as  we  have  seen,  there  are  antagonisms  between  wants  or  re- 
sponses within  one  body,  —  as  well  as  certain  harmonies.  Rela- 
tive to  other  persons,  nimierous  of  any  subject's  desires  are  strictly 
selfish,  and  as  population  increases  (due  to  certain  desires),  the 
fact  of  scarcity  of  goods  involves  conflict.  Even  if  population 
were  voluntarily  checked,  it  is  Hkely  that  the  emulative,  pug- 
nacious, and  esthetic  impulses  would  still  cause  some  contention 
over  nature's  bounty.  Obviously  not  all  wants  are  egoistic,  — the 
motives  of  family  love,  friendship,  honor  and  compassion  all 
soften  the  strife.^ 

It  should  be  noticed  that  these  motives  do  not  contradict  the 
general  theory  of  valuation,  nor  do  they  overcome  the  discrep- 
ancies between  wants  and  goods.    The  father  who  goes  hungry 

^  Many  apparently  altruistic  desires  have  a  self-reference  which  is  exclusive. 
The  local  magnate,  for  example,  may  want  various  charities  which  benefit  his  com- 
munity, but  these  are  to  be  known  to  all  the  world  as  his  benefactions.  We  are  all  too 
familiar  with  various  kinds  of  unselfishness  with  '  strings  tied  to  them.' 


PSYCHOLOGY  OF  THE  VALUATION  PROCESS  251 

that  his  family  may  eat  feels  keenly  the  fact  of  scarcity,  and  he 
has  satisfied  as  many  of  his  wants,  in  the  order  of  their  urgency, 
as  the  situation  will  permit,  which  is  just  what  the  theory  of  value 
predicts  he  will  do.  So  of  any  altruistic  act  in  business;  it  is  a  dis- 
turbing factor  in  the  theory  of  exchange  values,  but  not  to  the 
theory  of  individual  valuation,  for  the  agent  has  simply  bought 
the  satisfaction  of  his  charitable  want  by  foregoing  his  want  of 
wealth.  We  must  observe  too  that  the  most  altruistic  motives 
often  enter  into  self-interested  desire  for  wealth.  No  one  can 
carry  out  many  of  his  good  intentions  without  some  material  re- 
sources; in  fact,  substantially  every  person  does  have  many  un- 
selfish uses  for  his  wealth.  In  the  market,  where  most  of  the 
people  he  deals  with  are  personal  strangers,  it  is  probable  that 
each  one  will  strive  to  get  all  he  can  for  his  product.^  Self-interest, 
therefore,  which  is  assumed  by  economists  to  be  prevalent  in 
business  transactions,  is  not  at  all  a  matter  of  egoism  or  selfishness 
in  all  motives;  and  in  fact,  among  any  group  of  men  who  are 
equally  caimy  in  business  we  shall  find  various  degrees  of  altruism 
when  it  comes  to  spending  their  incomes. 

It  is  not  to  be  assumed,  either,  that  the  policy  of  getting  full 
market  value  of  what  one  has  to  sell  —  the  policy  dictated  by  self- 
interest  —  is  necessarily  in  the  long  run  a  less  benevolent  policy 
than  that  of  selling  according  to  the  supposed  circumstances  of 
the  purchaser.  One  of  the  greatest  contributions  of  Adam  Smith 
and  his  followers  was  the  demonstration  that  this  self-interest 
poHcy,  if  combined  with  wise  consumption,  does  tend  toward  the 
most  economical  satisfaction  of  human  wants, — ^  though  the  busi- 
ness man  himself  least  suspects  it.^  Carver  has  supplemented  this 
line  of  thought  by  showing  that  in  the  field  where  wants  are  iden- 

^  Cf.  Warner  Fite,  "Moral  Valuations  and  Economic  Laws,"  Jour.  Phil.  Psy., 
etc.,  14:  5-19  (1917). 

^  "It  is  to  no  purpose,  that  the  proud  and  unfeeling  landlord  views  his  extensive 
fields,  and  without  a  thought  for  the  wants  of  his  brethren,  in  imagination  con- 
sumes himself  the  whole  harvest  that  grows  upon  them.  .  .  .  The  capacity  of  his 
stomach  bears  no  proportion  to  the  immensity  of  his  desires,  and  will  receive  no 
more  than  that  of  the  meanest  peasant.  The  rest  he  is  obliged  to  distribute  among 
those,  who  prepare,  in  the  nicest  manner,  that  little  which  he  himself  makes  use  of, 
among  those  who  fit  up  the  palace  in  which  this  little  is  to  be  consumed,"  etc.  — 
Theory  of  Moral  Sentiments,  Pt.  IV,  ch.  i. 


252  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

tical  with  needs,  production  so  as  to  maximize  profits  is  exactly 
the  same  policy  as  would  be  dictated  by  benevolence,  since  it 
is  in  supplying  the  things  most  urgently  wanted  that  the  largest 
profits  are  to  be  made.^  The  person  who  wants  to  do  business 
philanthropically  is  likely  to  give  his  charity  indiscriminatingly, 
since  it  falls  to  the  people  who  happen  to  come  into  his  sales- 
room or  to  seek  his  employ.  Often  his  chances  of  doing  good 
would  be  about  as  great  if  he  threw  his  money  into  any  crowd 
on  the  street. 

The  egoistic  motives  may  be  '  harnessed  '  for  the  general  good 
in  several  ways,  and  the  principal  harness  is  custom.  In  the 
earliest  days  of  our  race,  we  may  suppose,  competition  was  mainly 
physical,  employing  fists,  teeth,  or  crude  weapons.  But  the  most 
primitive  societies  of  which  we  have  direct  knowledge  have  set 
some  limits  of  custom  on  spontaneous  uprisings  of  contention. 
Members  must  settle  their  quarrels  without  intratribal  murder 
or  wife-stealing,  let  us  say,  or  they  may  accumulate  possessions 
only  on  condition  of  giving  the  medicine  man  a  tribute.  By 
artificial  arrangements  the  egoistic  motives  of  fear  —  of  physical 
or  of  supernatural  punishment  — -  have  been  set  against  the  other 
egoistic  motives  to  violence. 

Quite  early  the  emulative,  social-approval,  instincts  are  thus 
harnessed.  This  propensity  pushes  children  and  men  into  a  race 
for  distinction,  for  eminence  or  fame;  so  that  it  ('ambition')  has 
been  recognized  since  most  ancient  times  as  a  prime  cause  of  com- 
petition; but  since  in  most  people  it  is  not  satisfied  with  grudging 
or  perfunctory  approval,  it  becomes  one  of  the  strongest  checks  on 
heedless  egotism.  We  have  already  discussed  this  phase  of  custom 
as  far  as  we  are  able.  It  is  in  this  direction  that  we  look  for  theory 
as  to  the  plane  of  competition,  and  as  to  what  stunts  our  so-called 
self-interest  may  be  trained  to  do.  The  transformation  of  (ulti- 
mate) wants  is  also  of  the  greatest  importance  here,  since  the 
further  they  can  be  harmonized,  the  less  sharp  will  be  competi- 
tion. The  primitive  customs  at  which  we  have  guessed  are  the 
great-ancestors  of  our  present  legal  and  moral  restraints;  they  are 

^  Essays  in  Social  Justice,  especially  p.  io6. 


PSYCHOLOGY  OF  TEE  VALUATION  PROCESS  253 

the  beginnings  of  that  evolution  in  the  fonns  of  conflict  which  is 
the  riddle  of  social  philosophy.^ 

Adjustment  of  Present  Action  to  Future  Wants 

In  summary,  valuation  is  intelligent  behavior;  it  is  the  adjust- 
ment of  our  present  action  to  our  future  wants.  We  acquire  skill 
and  accuracy  in  it  just  as  we  do  in  other  adaptive  and  future- 
referring  acts.  We  employ  habits  unquestioningly  so  long  as  no 
obstruction  or  ambiguity  arises,  and  it  is  only  in  a  doubtful  situa- 
tion that  the  act  of  valuation,  as  of  reasoning  in  general,  occurs. 
We  save  labor  and  trouble  by  borrowing  other  people's  habits, 
which  originated  by  some  kind  of  reasoning;  and  by  this  cumula- 
tive growth  of  knowledge  (adaptive  behavior-tricks)  we  have 
achieved  increasingly  complex,  roundabout  means  of  satisfying 
our  wants, — incidentally  developing  new  wants  faster  than  we 
could  satisfy  the  old.  As  in  all  reasoning,  there  are  all  shades  of 
error  in  our  valuations,  many  of  which  are  as  serious  as  that  of  the 
squirrel  who  hoards  nuts  that  are  worm-eaten.  The  cause  is  the 
same  in  both  cases,  —  the  responses  are  not  adjusted  to  all  the 
'  relevant '  facts  of  the  situation. 

1  Among  the  manifold  attacks  on  this  riddle  there  is  a  popular  one  by  Franz 
Oppenheimer,  who  sees  in  the  State  the  survival  of  the  "poHtical  means"  to  wealth 
(violent  spoliation),  as  opposed  to  the  equally  ancient  "economic  means"  (volun- 
tary exchange).  (The  State;  Eng.  trans.,  1908.)  He  appears  to  think  this  distinc- 
tion is  known  to  every  human  mind,  and  that  the  primitive  (or  even  modern)  man 
has  a  moral  consciousness,  when  he  despoils  a  member  of  an  alien  tribe,  which  is 
quite  different  from  that  in  which  he  slays  wUd  animals  and  plunders  their  stores. 
In  our  view  the  two  cases  are  originally  accepted  in  the  same  matter-of-course  way. 
Direct,  and  if  necessary  forcible,  appropriation  is  doubtless  the  most  ancient  method 
of  satisfying  wants;  the  "economic  means"  evolves  through  long  ages;  and  to 
identify  hastily  "political  means"  with  violence  is  to  beg  a  presumption  that  all 
governments  are  '  exploiters.' 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

PSYCHOLOGY  IN  SAVING 

The  Social  Advantage  of  Capital 

In  Western  Civilization,  thrift  has  long  been  esteemed  a  virtue. 
Sombart,  whose  elaborate  historical  researches  lend  his  words 
great  weight,  tells  us  that  the  '  middle-class  virtues  '  of  frugality 
or  careful  attention  to  trifling  savings,  were  born  as  late  as  the 
fourteenth  century,  in  Florence.  It  is  in  the  writings  of  Alberti 
and  the  memoirs  of  Leonardo  da  Vinci's  grandfather,  of  this 
period,  that  he  finds  the  beginnings  of  those  wise  saws  on  econ- 
omy which  found  fullest  expression  in  Benjamin  Franklin.^  Pre- 
vious to  that  time,  he  says,  there  had  been  only  the  seigniorial 
fashion  of  profusion  among  people  of  means,  and  among  peasants 
the  enforced  parsimony  of  want.  While  Sombart  is  doubtless 
right  as  to  the  Franklin  type  of  propaganda,  there  is  no  doubt 
that  thrift,  in  the  sense  of  reasonable  provision  for  future  wants, 
has  had  a  moral  standing  since  prehistoric  times.  The  older 
parts  of  the  Bible  and  the  Greek  philosophers  commend  it  or 
take  it  for  granted,  and  the  Christian  precepts  of  "take  no 
thought  for  the  morrow"  were  avowedly  revolutionary  doctrines, 
justified  by  the  unminence  of  the  world's  final  catastrophe. 

We  shall  presently  attempt  some  genetic  explanation  of  the 
growth  of  such  prudential  sentiments,  but  first  let  us  consider  for 
a  moment  the  technological  aspects  of  saving. 

Up  to  the  Industrial  Revolution  of  the  eighteenth  century,  the 
technical  methods  by  which  saving  could  be  accomplished  were 
much  more  restricted  than  is  the  case  today.  Thrift  in  all  those 
preceding  ages  meant  chiefly  to  husband  your  stores  of  grain  and 
your  domestic  animals,  or  to  hoard  treasure  and  jewels,  which 
could  usually  be  exchanged  for  things  you  would  want,  so  that 

^  The  Quintessence  of  Capitalism  (translation  of  Der  Bourgeois),  Ch.  VII 
(original  edition,  1913). 

254 


PSYCHOLOGY  IN  SAVING  255 

when  flood,  drouth,  or  pestilence  might  come,  you  would  not  be 
wholly  without  succor.  Great  fortunes  were  characteristically 
large  flocks  of  animals  or  hoards  of  plate  and  precious  stones.  The 
thrift  which  the  Paraguayan  Indians  of  Mill's  illustration  had  not 
learned,  was  merely  restraint  from  slaughtering  the  work  oxen  for 
food.  Adam  Smith  voices  an  almost  pious  horror  at  spendthrift 
ways,  which  doubtless  springs  from  moral  (and  patriotic)  tradi- 
tion over  and  above  his  perception  of  the  technical  role  of  capital. 
"The  prodigal  perverts"  his  patrimony  when  "he  encroaches 
upon  his  capital.  Like  him  who  perverts  the  revenues  of  some 
pious  foundation  to  profane  purposes,  he  pays  the  wages  of  idle- 
ness with  those  funds  which  the  frugahty  of  his  forefathers  had,  as 
it  were,  consecrated  to  the  maintenance  of  industry."  ^  Such 
profligacy  diminishes  the  gross  funds  which  can  employ  labor, 
hence  restricts  the  population  and  wealth  of  the  nation,  —  which 
is  necessarily  wrong. 

Now,  although  Smith,  Mill,  Say,  and  the  classical  economists 
generally,  carried  on  further  tirades  on  the  advantage  of  saving 
over  consuming  luxuriously  in  that  the  former  use  gives  more 
employment  to  labor  and  so  in  the  long  run  raises  wages,  it  was 
Bohm-Bawerk  who  put  most  clearly  into  rehef  the  technological 
advantage  of  capital.  Capital,  said  he,  is  merely  tools,  which  are 
produced  by  labor  from  natural  resources  ('  land  ') .  Further 
labor,  using  the  tools,  can  produce  more  consumable  goods  than 
the  total  labor  (including  that  which  made  the  tools)  can  produce 
in  the  same  number  of  working  days,  working  with  less  elaborate 
equipment.  More  firewood,  or  corn,  for  example,  can  be  pro- 
duced by  a  given  number  of  labor  days,  if  axes  or  plows  are  made 
first,  than  if  all  the  labor  is  done  with  unaided  hands.  There  is  also 
a  *  biological  productivity  '  of  certain  forms  of  capital.  Seed, 
when  planted,  renews  itself  a  hundredfold;  and  a  herd  of  cattle 
on  the  plains  grows  by  spontaneous  propagation  if  their  owners 
leave  them  to  breed.  The  more  capital  saved,  then,  subject  to 
technical  limits  which  invention  is  always  pushing  into  the  dis- 
tance, the  less  is  the  labor  required  to  produce  consumable 
goods. 

1  Wealth  of  Nations,  Bk.  II,  ch.  iii. 


256  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

The  course  of  invention,  to  be  sure,  is  by  nature  unpredictable, 
but  in  general  tools  grow  more  complex  and  require  ever  more 
labor  to  build  whilst  successively  they  reduce  the  aggregate  labor 
cost  of  commodities.  The  discoveries  of  the  last  century  and  a 
half  have  given  us  processes  so  immensely  productive  that  popula- 
tion (in  the  Western  world)  has  increased  imprecedentedly  along 
with  (apparently)  some  general  rise  in  the  level  of  comfort. 
Everyone  hopes  that  mechanical  progress  will  soon  eliminate 
poverty  as  we  know  it  today,  though  many  reformers  fail  to  see 
the  conditions  of  saving  necessary  to  their  dream.  They  revile 
the  '  capitalist '  and  ridicule  the  economist  for  his  concern  over 
accumulation,  but  one  and  all  they  talk  of  the  wonders  which  wUl 
be  accomplished  by  automatic  machinery.  Since  by  general  con- 
sent, therefore,  tools  are  useful  in  production,  we  shall  now  take 
the  technological  aspects  of  capital  for  granted,  and  inquire  into 
its  psychological  phases. 

Evolution  of  Providence 

In  the  first  place  we  have  the  fact  that  interest  is  paid  and  has 
long  been  paid  for  the  loan  of  capital.  Even  granted  that  '  ex- 
plicit '  interest  taking  was  for  some  time  restrained  by  Canon  Law 
or  otherwise,  '  implicit '  interest  persisted  all  the  while  in  aU 
prices  of  producers'  goods.  How  is  this  '  institution  '  maintained 
on  the  grand  scale  we  know?  Technological  or  biological  pro- 
ductivity of  capital  alone  does  not  explain  the  matter,  for  as 
Bohm-Bawerk  made  clear  (and  then  forgot),  physical  produc- 
tivity is  not  necessarily  value  productivity.  The  potential  advan- 
tages of  a  piece  of  capital  might  be  counted  in  full  into  its  present 
price,  so  that  any  orchard,  for  example,  would  exchange  for  as 
many  apples  as  it  would  ever  produce.  Such  would  be  the  case  if 
people  in  general  wanted  consumers'  goods,  available  only  in  the 
future,  with  the  same  intensity  as  they  want  the  same  kind  of 
goods  available  for  immediate  consumption.  The  Marxian  theory 
that  interest  is  due  only  to  forcible  exploitation  has  some  place  in 
the  whole  story,  but  sufficient  cases  of  interest-giving  and  taking 
on  a  free  contractual  basis  are  easily  found  to  make  this  explana- 
tion inadequate.   A  number  of  writers,  especially  Bohm-Bawerk 


PSYCHOLOGY  IN  SAVING  257 

and  Fisher,  have  shown  in  detail  that  contractual,  explicit  interest 
is  only  a  small  part  of  the  real  phenomenon  of  interest;  that  im- 
plicit interest  lurks  in  practically  every  price,  —  not  merely  in 
the  values  of  houses  or  farms.  It  would  be  impossible  to  stamp 
out  all  interest-taking  by  law,  so  long  as  any  free  buying  and  sell- 
ing remained.  The  pivot  of  interest  theory,  therefore,  is  in  '  time- 
preference,'  or  people's  'impatience'  —  we  use  Fisher's  well- 
known  terms  —  to  get  enjoyable  goods.  This  impatience  causes 
them,  on  the  average,  to  sell  their  future  birthrights  for  present 
messes  of  pottage  to  the  extent  of  some  five  or  ten  per  cent. 

Taking  for  granted,  now,  the  general  argument  of  Fisher  in  his 
admirable  The  Rate  of  Interest,  we  shall  consider  the  contacts  of 
our  psychological  data  with  the  economist's  principle  of  time 
preference.  Unhappily  psychologists  have  less  to  offer  us  on  this 
than  on  any  of  our  other  problems,  —  that  is,  they  have  done  less 
work  that  touches  on  it. 

It  is  prudence,  however,  rather  than  improvidence,  that  is  hard 
to  account  for.  The  lower  animals  have  (and  presumably  our 
prehuman  ancestors  had)  as  Aristotle  said,  no  sense  of  time;  they 
live  in  the  present  and  make  no  responses  to  future  wants.  But 
men,  The  Philosopher  went  on,  have  memory  and  imagination 
(more  of  these  than  the  brutes,  anyway),  and  so  they  act  with 
reference  to  a  long-run  satisfaction. 

But  how  can  *  future  wants,'  physiologically,  act  on  us  in  the 
present?  If  we  act  at  all,  is  it  not  because  of  a  present  want?  A 
future  want,  by  definition,  will  not  exist  for  some  months  or 
years. 

Of  course  the  actual  future  wants  are  not  operative  now,  and 
for  that  reason  we  often  sadly  miscalculate  what  they  will  be. 
But  what  we  do  is  to  learn  to  respond  to  conditions  in  distant  times 
and  places,  through  signs  or  '  shadows  cast  before,'  which  are 
immediately  present  to  our  senses.  It  is  purely  a  case  of  learning, 
save  to  the  extent  that  instinct  makes  us  unwittingly  provide  for 
the  future  as  a  squirrel  hoards  nuts, — and  such  cases  in  human 
affairs  are  negligible.  When  the  mouse  learns  to  avoid  the  white 
doorway  which  harbors  an  electric  shock,  we  might  say  that  he 
is  moved  by  a  future  want  to  get  away  from  the  pain, — he  re- 


258  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

spends  to  the  white  arch,  which  is  the  sign  of  a  more  distant  situa- 
tion. On  only  a  little  more  complex  scale,  the  small  boy  avoids 
the  green  apples  which  have  previously  given  him  stomach  ache. 
Both  these  sorts  of  behavior  are  clearly  provident,  and  both  are 
clearly  based  on  experience  and  imaginal  revival  of  it.  The  be- 
havior may  become  stabilized  into  habit,  and  the  images  fade 
away  (such  is  usually  the  case  with  adults  and  green  apples) ;  but 
it  is  still  implicitly  provident.  As  far  as  we  know,  any  case  of 
economic  providence  will  be  resolved  into  the  elements  of  these 
absurd  illustrations, — instinctive  likes  and  dislikes,  and  learning 
as  to  means  to  satisfy  these  wants  on  conditioned  reflex  principles. 
The  '  future  want,'  whether  it  be  provision  against  pain,  hunger, 
the  disgrace  of  poverty,  or  the  positive  satisfactions  of  eating, 
fame,  or  the  welfare  of  offspring,  is  efifective  only  when  its  ele- 
ments have  been  experienced  by  the  agent  in  a  context  toward 
which  he  learns  to  react  as  to  the  '  cause '  of  that  desired  and 
known  experience. 

The  view  has  been  fathered  by  Professor  John  Dewey,  it  is 
true,  that  human  beings  react  strongly  toward  the  merely  un- 
known, toward  discovery,  toward  "creative  experience."^  No 
doubt  most  people  would  recognize  such  a  consciousness;  but  the 
stimuU  involved  are  without  doubt  definite  present  objects.  If 
you  are  considering  an  airplane  ride,  these  stimuH  include  the  man 
who  is  offering  to  take  you,  and  a  mass  of  images  of  past  delightful 
experiences  in  swings,  automobiles,  and  other  '  adventures.'  To 
say  that  such  a  prospective  airplane  passenger  is  moved  by  *  the 
unknown  '  is  like  saying  that  the  small  boy  is  responding  to  a 
stomach  ache  he  will  not  have, — a  portentous  metaphysical 
puzzle!  It  is  simply  one  of  the  innumerable  confusions  arising 
from  subjective  psychologizing. 

Time-Evaluation 

How  shall  we  conceive,  now,  of  the  struggle  within  the  breast, 
between  the  impulse  to  present  enjo3anent  and  the  desire  for 
future  benefit?  Our  discussions  of  reasoning  and  of  valuation  have 

^  See  "  The  Phases  of  the  Economic  Interest,"  by  H.  W.  Stuart,  in  the  volume 
called  Creative  Intelligence,  by  Dewey  and  others  (1917). 


PSYCHOLOGY  IN  SAVING  259 

indicated  the  way.  It  is  indeed  a  case  of  valuation,  or  of  compari- 
son between  two  utilities.  Economists  know  that  the  present 
enjojrment  will  generally  prevail  over  the  same  kind  and  amount 
of  enjoyment  available  only  in  the  future.  The  'present  want '  is 
one  system  of  reflexes,  including  the  numerous  responses  which 
make  up  *  it  is  to  be  right  now,'  —  not  least  among  these  are  the 
aroused  consummatory  reactions,  such  as  the  flow  of  saliva.  The 
other  system  of  responses,  which  refers  to  a  more  distant  con- 
summation, is  perhaps  composed  of  a  wider  range  of  imaginal 
elements,  and  these  must  be  extensive  and  well-established  to 
overcome  the  force  of  the  incipient  consmnmatory  reactions  in  the 
*  present  want.'  It  would  be  premature  to  attempt  to  analyze  any 
given  instance  further  now,  since  the  one  point  on  which  psy- 
chologists would  reach  most  complete  agreement  is  that  each  of 
these  want-  and  desire-units,  which  economists  handle  so  freely,  is 
for  psychological  analysis  a  vast  constellation  of  reactions  which 
nearly  defies  understanding.  But  we  have  perhaps  shown  that  a 
much  fuUer  understanding  of  the  process  of  time-evaluation  is  to 
be  hoped  for  from  psychological  research. 

One  thing  is  fairly  certain,  both  to  psychology  and  to  common 
sense :  there  is  a  steady  growth  of  providence  parallel  to  and  per- 
haps identical  with,  the  growth  of  knowledge.  No  one  can  provide 
for  a  future  want  until  he  learns  what  action  in  the  present  will  so 
provide,  and  this  knowledge  has  been  steadily  developing  through 
the  ages.  It  is  often  said  that  most  people  learn  only  by  their  own 
bitter  experience;  they  will  not  take  the  word  of  some  one  else. 
Our  small  boy,  to  be  sure,  usually  insists  on  personal  acquaintance 
with  green  apples,  but  as  he  grows  older  he  becomes  more  teach- 
able, and  when  he  sees  an  electric  station  marked  "Danger  — 
10,000  volts,"  he  does  not  seek  empirical  confirmation  of  the 
warning. 

This  is  not  to  say  that  all  hiunan  species,  or  all  members  of  any 
species,  can  be  taught  providence.  The  range  of  general  learning 
capacity,  as  we  have  had  occasion  to  insist,  varies  considerably  in 
both  cases,  and  there  are  moreover  differences  in  original  strength 
among  the  impulses,  so  that  one  man  finds  it  most  difficult  to 
avoid  intoxication,  while  another's  vice  is  overeating,  and  yet 


26o  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

another  is  unusually  solicitous  about  his  children,  etc.  Much  of 
these  apparent  differences,  however,  may  doubtless  be  ascribed  to 
the  circumstances  of  their  rearing.  Biicher's  picture  of  primitive 
man  as  ahnost  wholly  improvident,  living  entirely  from  hand  to 
mouth,^  is  therefore  perfectly  plausible,  but  we  must  distinguish 
sharply  between  those  branches  of  mankind  who  somehow  be- 
come possessed  of  an  inheritable  large  learning  capacity,  and 
those,  nearer  the  brutes  in  mtelUgence,  who  can  never  get  beyond 
a  certain  stage  in  intelligent  provision  and  hence  are  still  with  us 
as  '  primitive  men.'  A  host  of  special  problems  are  here  sug- 
gested, on  which  further  data  must  be  sought. 

The  Marginal  Saver,  and  the  Equilibrium  or  Func- 
tional Theory  of  Interest 

It  is  now  recognized  by  virtually  all  theorists  on  interest  that 
some  saving  would  go  on  even  if  no  interest  whatever  were  paid, 
—  in  fact,  that  some  accumulation  would  take  place  in  the  face  of 
negative  interest.  That  is,  many  of  us  are  so  provident  that  we 
should  be  willing,  if  necessary,  to  pay  for  facihties  for  '  storing  ' 
our  savings  until  that  time  in  the  future  when  we  should  need 
them  more  than  we  do  now.  Possibly  some  of  this  '  automatic  ' 
saving  is  quasi-instinctive,  like  the  dog's  or  the  squirrel's  hoard- 
ing. Most  of  it,  however,  is  due  to  the  habits  dependent  on  our 
special  environment,— accumulations  of  knowledge,  of  technical 
arts  making  saving  easy,  and  of  precepts  and  examples  exhorting 
thrift.  *  Rainy-day  '  saving  in  some  degree  is  practised  by  nearly 
all.  The  parental  instincts  furnish  a  natural  drive  toward  accu- 
mulation, which  is  reinforced  by  customs  calling  such  provision 
for  the  children  praiseworthy.^  Force  of  habit  keeps  many  people 
accumulating  when  other  motives  have  become  well-nigh  obso- 
lete, and  the  desire  to  make  oneself  conspicuous  for  his  large 
hoard  (which  is  at  bottom  the  same  motive  as  the  miser's  who 
simulates  poverty  to  the  world)  is  of  course  a  great  force  toward 
the  heaping  up  of  possessions. 

^  Industrial  Evolution,  Ch.  I. 

2  Cf.  Marshall,  Principles,  Bk.  IV,  ch.  vi,  sees.  5,6:  —  "  Family  affection  is  the 
main  motive  of  saving." 


PSYCHOLOGY  IN  SAVING  261 

It  is  sometimes  loosely  said,  moreover,  that  the  very  rich  are 
physically  unable  to  consume  their  vast  wealth,  and  so  they 
*  save  '  in  spite  of  themselves.^  The  present  writer  considers  this 
proposition  doubtful,  except  to  the  following  extent:  On  the 
principle  of  diminishing  utility,  it  is  less  sacrifice  for  the  man  with 
a  thousand  dollars  either  to  lose  or  to  refrain  from  consuming  one 
dollar  than  for  the  man  who  has  only  one  hundred  dollars  all  told. 
But  is  it  easier  for  the  one  to  spare  any  given  fraction  of  his  stock 
than  for  the  other  to  spare  the  same  fraction?  The  affirmative 
does  not  follow  from  diminishing  utility.  At  any  rate,  even  sup- 
posing that  the  man  with  a  thousand  dollars  will,  on  the  average, 
be  wilHng  to  save  ten  dollars  for  a  lower  percentage  premium  than 
that  for  which  the  man  with  a  hundred  will  save  one,  we  are  still 
not  sure  that  the  former's  fortune  ever  could  become  so  large  that 
he  would  have  no  reluctance  whatever  to  save  any  part  of  it.  Cut 
off  his  interest  and  he  may  still  save,  yes,  but  so  may  people  of 
any  grade  of  fortune,  from  the  motives  we  have  reckoned  with  in 
the  preceding  paragraph. 

But,  the  usual  analysis  goes  on  (say  by  Carver,  who  was  a 
pioneer  on  this  point '),  such  automatic  saving  does  not  supply  as 
much  capital  as  society  demands.  The  scale  of  demand  offers  are 
based  considerably  on  the  '  productivity  '  of  capital,  —  the  ad- 
vantage in  total  labor  days  from  using  tools.  As  more  can  be 
used  with  profit  than  will  be  forthcoming  without  interest,  a  part 
of  this  advantage  from  the  use  of  capital  has  to  be  paid  as  interest 
to  the  *  marginal  saver  '  to  overcome  his  preference  for  present 
enjoyment  of  his  wealth.  Thus  the  theory  of  interest  is  made  part 
of  the  theory  of  value,  with  demand  and  supply  in  equilibrium. 
Demand  varies  with  the  diminishing  usefulness  of  added  install- 
ments of  capital,  in  any  given  state  of  the  arts;  and  the  resistance 
to  saving  increases  as  more  installments  are  withheld  out  of  a 
given  income.^  It  is  presimied  that  the  reader  is  familiar  with  this 

^  Cf.  Hobson,  Work  and  Wealth,  pp.  98,  99;  though  the  above  does  not  quite 
state  his  position. 

2  See  his  "  Place  of  Abstinence  in  the  Theory  of  Interest,"  Quar.  Jour.  Econ.,  8: 
40-61  (1893). 

^  The  marginal  saver,  of  course,  does  not  refer  to  any  particular  set  of  persons, 
but  to  the  finail  increment  in  every  saver's  accumulation. 


262  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

analysis,  as  found  in  Carver,  Marshall,  Taussig,  Fetter  and  others, 
—  essentially  it  is  in  Bohm-Bawerk  and  Fisher.  Fisher  develops  a 
useful  concept  of  individual  income  streams  in  time,  which  have 
much  to  do  with  any  individual's  rate  of  time  preference,  and  he 
shows  ingeniously  that  the  less  '  impatient '  persons  keep  lending 
to  the  more  impatient  until  the  income  streams  of  each  have  been 
altered  so  as  to  bring  the  rates  of  both  to  the  market  equilibrium.^ 

Fisher  protests  against  the  so-called  productivity  of  capital  as 
part  of  interest  theory,  but  he  does  not  entirely  do  without  it. 
The  rising  income  stream  of  the  entrepreneur  is  dependent  partly 
upon  the  technical  productivity  of  the  capital  he  borrows.  In- 
terest would  exist,  no  doubt,  if  there  were  only  consumption 
loans,  but  the  scale  of  lending  and  the  rate  of  interest  would  un- 
doubtedly be  different  from  what  we  now  know. 

In  our  judgment  the  effect  of  the  Great  War  on  interest  rates 
tends  to  confirm  the  equiUbrium  theory  just  mentioned.  The  net 
efifect  up  to  the  present  (1920)  has  been  an  extraordinary  increase 
in  the  interest  rate  (on  equivalent  security)  —  say  from  four  or 
five  to  seven  or  eight  per  cent  —  much  more  than  the  usual  in- 
crease in  other  periods  of  rising  prices.  There  was  inconceivable 
destruction  of  capital  in  the  war,  including  a  great  deterioration  of 
transportation  facihties.  New  capital,  therefore,  can  be  applied 
to  uses  more  important  and  '  productive  '  than  is  usual  in  normal 
times;  new  engines  and  cars,  for  example,  make  a  much  greater 
difference  in  ultimate  production  than  normally,  —  their  uses, 
that  is,  are  considerably  above  the  usual  margin  of  indifference. 
As  to  the  supply  side,  everyone  had  been  saving  to  his  limit  to 
supply  munitions  and  food  for  the  destruction  of  war,  and  so  the 
further  saving  necessary  to  supply  rail  or  any  other  equipment  is 
made  more  reluctantly  than  is  the  case  with  the  smaller  amounts 
required  in  normal  times.  Popularly  and  inexactly  we  might  say, 
"the  demand  for  capital  has  outrim  the  supply." 

Marginal  Saving  Shown  Only  in  Mass  Action 

As  in  the  marginal  theory  of  value  generally,  we  should  be  care- 
ful not  to  speak  as  though  every  saver  made  refined  calculations 

1  The  Rate  of  Interest  (1907),  especially  Chs.  VII,  VIII. 


PSYCHOLOGY  IN  SAVING  263 

statable  in  mathematical  formulae.  Introspective  evidence  alone 
would  brand  the  marginal  saver  as  a  myth.  Probably  very  few 
persons  could  say  accurately  whether  they  save  more  when  the 
market  rate  of  interest  goes  up.  Most  of  us  would  say  we  save 
what  we  can  in  any  case,  and  it  is  a  matter  of  luck  what  interest 
we  get.  In  this  case  again  it  is  evidence  of  the  behavior  of  large 
masses,  with  *  other  things  equal '  in  a  series  of  experiments,  that 
alone  will  give  us  laws.  It  is  certain,  as  has  been  pointed  out,  that 
there  is  much  intramarginal  saving,  and  the  theorists  also  com- 
monly point  out  that  some  people  have  a  certain  ('  unearned  ') 
income  as  a  goal,  and  hence  must  save  more  rather  than  less  when 
the  interest  rate  goes  down.  Fisher's  suggestion  that  every  pur- 
chaser discounts  the  future  uses  of  hats,  overcoats  and  everything 
else,  and  other  writers'  illustrations  of  a  traditional  savage  bor- 
rowing a  canoe,  occasion  some  mirth  even  among  reputable 
economists. 

There  is  much  less  doubt  that  most  people  watch  pretty  closely 
for  means  of  getting  the  largest  possible  return  on  whatever  capital 
they  do  save;  but  this  fact  alone  does  not  prove  that  there  are  any 
marginal  savers.  It  is  conceivable  that  the  automatic  forces  de- 
termine the  total  amount  saved,  whilst  the  rate  of  interest  (based, 
on  this  assumption,  wholly  on  the  diminishing  productivity  of 
capital)  merely  apportions  the  total  stock  to  the  most  remunera- 
tive uses.  Even  if  this  be  really  the  case,  we  may  observe,  the 
institution  of  interest  performs  a  valuable  social  function  by 
directing  capital  into  the  chaimels  of  greatest  effectiveness. 

Taussig  inclines  toward  the  opposite  hypothesis,  namely,  that 
there  is  a  normal  rate  of  time  preference  —  about  four  to  five  per 
cent  —  and  that  the  amount  of  capital  supplied  increases  or 
diminishes  rapidly  in  response  to  slight  variations  in  the  interest 
rate,  which  are  due  to  oscillations  in  the  productivity-demand 
curve,^  and  soon  settles  to  its  normal  price.  Interest  is  here  con- 
ceived to  be  a  case  of  value  under  constant  cost.  He  points  out 
that  the  interest  rate  (exempUfied  by  the  French  government's 
rentes)  has  remained  within  a  few  points  of  this  four-or-five  per 
cent  level  for  several  centuries,  although  the  world's  stock  of 

1  Principles,  Ch.  XXXIX,  sec.  5. 


264  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

capital,  even  in  proportion  to  population,  has  increased  with 
inventions  some  thousand-fold. 

The  oscillations  in  explicit  interest  rates  would  probably  have 
been  more  extreme,  however,  if  in  the  modern  period  capitalists 
and  entrepreneurs  had  been  usually  separate.  The  fact  seems  to 
be  that  our  great  accumulations  have  been  made  as  profits,  and 
retained  as  surpluses  in  the  businesses  in  the  hope  of  earning 
further  great  profits.^  This  is  in  many  respects  like  lending  at  high 
interest,  and  helps  to  account  for  the  difficulty  of  attracting  capi- 
tal to  public  utilities  when  they  have  been  limited  to  a  *  reason- 
able return  '  on  their  bona  fide  investment. 

But  when  all  is  said,  there  is  no  more  reason  for  doubting  the 
existence  of  the  marginal  saver  than  there  is  for  rejecting  the 
marginal  buyer.  Both  are  abstractions,  as  the  '  average  man  ' 
always  is.  They  represent  simply  a  mathematical  expression  of 
the  '  average  '  man's  reaction  toward  infinitesimal  changes  in 
prices;  and  when  mass  statistics  are  available  they  show  a  regular- 
ity of  action  which  make  them  susceptible  of  such  mathematical 
analysis.  In  like  manner  the  average  effect  of  vaccination  does  not 
show  up  in  any  one  case,  but  the  calculation  of  such  an  average  is 
an  indispensable  step  toward  the  control  of  smallpox.  An  average 
quantity  or  measurement  even  in  physics  may  not  coincide  with 
any  actual  observation,  yet  such  averages  form  the  basis  of  all  our 
modem  technology.  The  sufficient  vindication  of  the  marginal 
saver  is  the  expansion  or  contraction  of  aggregate  saving  in  any 
social  group  with  the  rise  or  fall  of  interest, — other  things  being 
equal.  Good  tests  of  the  theory,  with  other  things  equal,  must 
necessarily  be  rare.  The  fact  that  Government,  or  any  individual, 
can  borrow  more  at  six  per  cent  than  it  can  at  five  per  cent  might 
mean  only  that  it  attracts  capital  away  from  other  borrowers  who 
are  unable  to  pay  as  much.  But  the  difficulties  of  making  good 
tests  should  not  be  insuperable. 

Reducing  the  Cost  of  Saving 

From  the  concepts  of  automatic  saving  and  the  marginal  saver 
there  follows  the  concept  of  saver's  rent  or  surplus,  analogous  to 

1  Cf.  V.  S.  Clark,  History  of  Manufactures  in  the  United  States. 


PSYCHOLOGY  IN  SAVING  265 

consumer's  surplus.  One  price  (with  some  practical  limitations) 
rules  in  the  market,  and  those  who  would  have  saved  for  less  than 
this  price  get  a  payment  that  would  not  have  been  necessary  to 
evoke  their  own  service.  This  part  of  the  total  price,  which  is 
sometimes  called  "unproductive  surplus"  paid  by  the  modern 
industrial  system,  is  becoming  a  focal  point  of  the  attacks  of 
modern  social  reform  theorists  such  as  Hobson.  The  idle  rich, 
supported  by  interest  without  doing  a  stroke  of  work,  are  marked 
for  extinction  by  these  as  by  older  sociaHstic  theorists,  but  unlike 
the  latter,  these  modern  critics  recognize  that  a  part  of  our  exist- 
ing capital  stock  would  not  be  saved  unless  interest  were  paid. 
Not  all  interest  per  se,  therefore,  but  the  '  surplus  '  element  in 
interest,  is  the  object  of  their  attack.  The  problem  is  to  cut  off 
this  hidden  element,  and  still  leave  motives  adequate  to  supply 
the  necessary  amoimt  of  capital. 

Naturally  the  first  suggestion  is  to  transfer  it  to  the  whole  com- 
mimity  by  taxation,  along  with  the  pure  rent  of  land,  which  is 
likewise  considered  an  '  unproductive  surplus  '  when  paid  over  to 
private  landlords.  Ground  rent  might,  but  for  administrative 
difficulties  and  questions  of  justice  toward  the  owners,  be  taxed 
away  completely  without  any  prospect  of  the  supply  of  land  being 
diminished,  but  the  rent  element  in  interest  is  even  harder  to 
point  out  or  to  reach.  Something  along  the  line  of  this  program  is 
realized,  probably,  in  progressive  taxes  on  '  unearned  '  incomes 
(both  rent  and  interest),  for  it  is  the  saving  of  the  larger  owners, 
who  are  therefore  receivers  of  the  larger  interest  incomes,  which  is 
particularly  pointed  out  as  '  automatic  '  saving.  Of  course  the 
rainy-day  saving  of  the  poor  is  also  carried  on  very  largely  without 
regard  to  the  rate  of  interest,  and  interest  paid  on  it  is  improduc- 
tive  surplus  too,  from  this  point  of  view,  but  it  is  not  suggested 
that  this  income  be  confiscated  by  the  state  while  the  middle-class 
person  who  demands  interest  as  a  condition  of  saving,  is  allowed 
his  bribe.  The  project  of  striking  off  '  unproductive  '  incomes 
clearly  is  difficult  of  execution  and  is  of  uncertain  justice. 

More  drastic  is  the  socialist  proposal  of  making  the  state  the 
exclusive  capitalist,  and  forcing  everybody  to  work.  Everyone 
will  then  bear  a  proportionate  share  of  the  sacrifices  of  saving;  no 


266  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

one  will  be  allowed  to  live  in  idleness.  This  plan  in  the  hands  of 
either  a  benevolent  despot  or  a  society  of  wise  men  might  indeed 
carry  on  the  requisite  accmnulation  without  the  malpractices  of 
individuaHst  capitaUsm;  but  the  slight  evidence  as  to  its  feasi- 
bihty,  with  human  nature  as  it  is,  suppUed  by  the  commimal  enter- 
prises of  modern  cities  and  states,  rather  tells  against  it.  When  a 
public  work  requiring  considerable  capital  is  decided  upon,  such 
as  a  school,  water  plant  or  bridge,  almost  invariably  private 
capitaUsts  are  called  upon  to  supply  the  capital  by  purchasing  the 
pubUc  authority's  bonds.  Considerable  stocks  of  capital  are  in- 
deed acquired  by  states  and  municipalities,  through  unearned  in- 
crements or  the  retiring  of  bonds  before  the  property  is  worn  out, 
but  the  amount  of  real  saving  done  by  citizens  in  corporate  capac- 
ity is  comparatively  small.  If  private  capitaHsts  were  extin- 
guished, of  course  the  state  affairs  would  assume  new  importance 
and  we  are  quite  unable  to  see  what  the  long-run  effect  would  be 
upon  capital  equipment. 

Inheritance 

The  motives  concerned  in  accumulation  do  not  relate  merely  to 
a  leisure-class  income  for  the  original  saver.  He  saves  in  many 
cases  for  the  conscious  purpose  of  providing  as  large  an  endow- 
ment as  possible  for  his  heirs,  and  so  economists  appraise  the 
institution  of  inheritance  chiefly  as  to  its  influence  on  saving.  It 
might  be  better  for  society  and  for  individuals  if  inheritance  were 
aboHshed,  and  the  hereditary  idlers  thus  cut  off  at  a  stroke,  if  we 
could  take  the  supply  of  capital  for  granted.  But  though  wealth 
may  be  a  doubtful  boon  to  the  children,  there  is  little  doubt  that 
many  fathers  are  stimulated  to  save  by  the  prospect  of  their 
children  receiving  the  accumulation  and  becoming  respectable 
leisure-class  members.  AboHsh  inheritance,  and  you  go  a  long 
way  toward  equaHzing  opportimities  throughout  the  rising  gen- 
eration, as  well  as  reducing  the  leisure-class  evils  to  a  minimum; 
but  will  men  ever  accumulate  so  much  for  the  state  as  for  their 
famines? 

This  is  another  problem  which  can  be  attacked  only  empir- 
ically; psychology  can  say  Uttle  more  than  that  it  would  expect, 


PSYCHOLOGY  IN  SAVING  267 

from  the  indications  of  our  biological  evolution,  that  labors  for 
love  of  family  will  in  general  be  more  sustained  than  labors  for 
love  of  the  state.  But  in  practice,  inheritance  taxes  with  a  moder- 
ate exemption  to  provide  for  education  of  the  heirs,  appear  not  to 
discourage  accumulation.  We  can  at  least  favor  the  reduction  of 
collateral  inheritances  (to  distant  relatives) ,  since  these  appear  to 
play  little  or  no  part  in  motivating  saving.  Inheritance  of  large 
fortunes  is  more  on  the  defensive  than  ever  before;  egaHtarian 
theory  and  the  pressure  on  pubUc  financiers  to  find  revenues  com- 
bine to  push  progressive  death  duties  higher  and  higher  by  both 
central  and  local  governments.  However  extreme  the  movement 
may  become,  and  however  such  taxes  are  squandered  by  the 
state  for  current  expenditures,  this  movement  seems  to  the 
writer  to  give  more  promise  of  curing  the  real  evils  of  capitalism 
than  does  any  program  for  attacking  interest-taking. 

Increasing  Providence 

Assuming  that  the  present  institutions  as  to  interest  and  in- 
heritance will  continue  for  some  time,  however,  do  our  psychologi- 
cal principles  suggest  any  means  of  improving  the  conditions  of 
accumulation? 

First,  what  has  been  said  on  influencing  wants  in  general  points 
to  possibilities  of  inducing  members  of  the  leisure  class  to  become 
more  obviously  useful.  In  some  respects  this  course  is  preferable 
to  any  forcible  means  of  '  putting  everybody  to  work,'  for  un- 
earned income  has  often  supported  men  engaged  in  work  that  be- 
came highly  esteemed  later  but  which  at  the  time  could  not  have 
been  sold.  We  must  recognize  that  a  leisure  class,  established  (as 
it  was)  by  conquest,  and  containing  (as  it  always  has)  a  large  pro- 
portion of  imworthy  members,  has  been  nevertheless  the  source  of 
most  of  our  art,  science  and  invention.  If  equaUty  had  been 
maintained,  we  should  probably  still  have  an  equality  of  ig- 
norance and  squalor.  The  few  members  of  this  leisure  class  to 
whom  we  owe  so  much  of  the  good  in  our  lives  were  not  thought 
especially  useful  by  the  majority  of  their  contemporaries,  —  they 
were  considered  '  idle  '  by  the  masses  because  they  were  living  in 
advance  of  their  time.  And  so  it  may  well  be  for  some  time  in  the 


268  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

future.  But  so  long  as  the  line  between  production  and  non-pro- 
duction is  liberally  drawn,  no  one  need  hesitate  to  try  to  cultivate 
ideals  of  usefulness  in  the  leisure  class.  If  their  living  were  more 
frugal  and  their  pursuits  generally  more  acceptable  to  their 
poorer  neighbors,  the  institution  of  interest  would  lose  many  of  its 
enemies. 

A  general  increase  in  providence,  moreover,  would  be  equiva- 
lent to  lowering  the  real  cost  of  saving.  It  would  increase  total 
utiUty,  because  capital  or  '  labor-saving  devices  '  would  roll  up 
the  faster.  With  lower  interest,  business  men  could  afford  to 
develop  all  manner  of  better  mechanical  equipment.  It  is  in  this 
connection  that  the  disputes  over  human  nature  and  the  interest 
rate  become  important.  Is  there  a  quasi-instinctive  time  prefer- 
ence, as  the  nearly  stationary  rate  in  the  past  has  suggested  to 
Taussig? 

We  believe  not,  and  to  that  extent  we  sympathize  with  the 
historical  or  institutional  economists'  criticisms  of  expositions 
which  impute  refined  calculations  on  present  and  future  utilities 
to  savages.  Our  own  barely  human  ancestors,  as  well  as  other 
savages  with  less  potentialities,  were  probably  about  as  improvi- 
dent as  lower  animals.  The  human  instincts  take  care  of  man 
fairly  well  in  the  present  (in  tropical  regions),  but  if  his  environ- 
ment temporarily  fails  him,  he  perishes.  The  growth  of  knowledge, 
which  is  our  means  of  reacting  with  reference  to  distant  times  and 
places,  is  a  slow  and  cumulative  process,  and  a  considerable  store 
had  to  be  embodied  in  tradition  and  custom  before  there  was  any 
such  thing  as  '  value  of  future  goods.'  Then,  the  need  of  provi- 
sion was  but  dimly  realized,  and  a  considerable  premium  placed 
on  the  present.  A  high  rate  of  interest  —  for  ages  implicit,  but 
finally  recognized  as  '  usury  '  —  was  necessary  to  even  the  bal- 
ance between  the  urgent  call  of  the  present  and  the  fainter  simi- 
mons  of  the  future.  We  therefore  look  upon  providence  as  a 
growing  thing  and  time  preference  as  variable  with  time,  place 
and  geography,  but  tending  to  diminish  in  any  people  whose  na- 
tive learning  capacity  is  high.  Risk,  however,  will  become  more 
of  a  deterrent  as  it  is  better  recognized,  and  hence  that  element  ia 
gross  interest  may  increase  except  as  far  as  the  actual  hazards 
which  risks  stand  for  are  reduced  by  collective  action. 


PSYCHOLOGY  IN  SAVING  269 

The  impulsiveness  of  certain  individual  wants  seems  to  make 
for  persistence  of  impatience.  The  so-called  lower  wants,  of 
hunger  and  of  escape  from  pain,  are  the  most  impulsive,  how- 
ever; and  these  recede  to  the  background  as  the  general  level  of 
comfort  rises  with  increased  production  relative  to  population. 
The  further  we  get  out  of  a  pain  economy,  the  easier  it  is  to  get 
still  further  ahead.  There  may  also  be  a  slow  drift  by  natural 
selection  toward  survival  of  those  people  who  are  least  impulsive, 
and  have  the  largest  native  capacity  for  prudence.  In  modern 
times,  to  be  sure,  the  imprudent  as  to  reproduction  have  left  the 
more  numerous  progeny,  but  other  customs  may  sometirne  make 
this  result  less  usual;  and  anyway,  in  the  competition  among 
societies,  it  is  the  European  type  rather  than  the  improvident 
savage  which  survives. 

Not  merely  growth  of  knowledge,  but  positive  propaganda,  is 
likely  to  raise  the  general  level  of  providence.  The  arts  of  the 
advertiser  are  being  brought  to  aid  the  long-standing  appeals  of 
the  preacher,  to  '  sell '  the  habits  of  thrift;  whilst  instruments  to- 
ward their  practice,  such  as  dime  banks,  building  and  loan  asso- 
ciations, insurance  companies,  are  being  placed  all  about  us. 
Much  of  this  propaganda  is  motived  by  mercenary  considerations, 
it  is  true,  and  many  of  the  appeals  are  fallacious;  but  persuasion 
probably  has  a  great  role  to  play  in  lowering  the  interest  rate  by 
reducing  the  psychic  resistance  to  saving.^ 

^  The  writer  recently  saw  an  advertisement  of  a  bond  house  which  dwelt  on  the 
increase  of  "  pleasures  "  which  investments  would  mean.  It  struck  him  as  less  effec- 
tive than  the  types  which  appeal  in  the  name  of  a  future  '  career  '  or  better  provi- 
sion for  dependents. 


CHAPTER  XIX 

WORK 

Desire  for  Wealth  as  a  Motive  in  Work 

If  men  were  not  offered  incentives  to  work,  in  the  shape  of  bribes 
or  threats,  what  would  they  do?  Many  of  us  are  inclined  to  say, 
"Man  is  naturally  indolent.  If  he  is  not  stimulated  to  work  he 
will  remain  idle,  doing  nothing  at  all."  But  that  is  a  crude  view. 
'  Idleness  '  always  consists  in  doing  something,  if  it  be  only  draw- 
ing breath;  and  we  frequently  make  jokes  about  the  strenuous 
efforts  which  some  loafers  will  make  to  avoid  doing  '  work.'  Play, 
of  course,  often  involves  heart-breaking  exertions.  The  distinc- 
tion between  work,  therefore,  and  play  or  idleness,  is  like  the 
farmer's  discrimination  of '  weeds  '  from  '  plants,'  it  turns  on  the 
economic  value  of  the  results.  Work  or  labor  is  the  activity,  not 
necessarily  irksome,  which  results  in  goods  that  are  scarce  and 
command  a  price. 

Biicher  has  pointed  out  that  among  the  most  primitive  peoples, 
work,  in  the  sense  of  industrial  activities,  seems  to  have  originated 
in  those  spontaneous  activities  not  related  to  the  lower  wants, 
which  we  would  at  first  sight  term  esthetic  or  playful. 

In  all  probability  there  are  instincts  similar  to  those  that  are  found  among 
the  more  intelligent  of  the  lower  animals,  that  impel  man  to  extend  his  ac- 
tivities beyond  the  mere  search  for  food,  especially  the  instinct  for  imitating 
and  for  experimenting.  .  .  .  The  taming  of  domestic  animals,  for  example, 
begins  not  with  the  useful  animals,  but  with  such  species  as  man  keeps  merely 
for  amusement  or  the  worship  of  gods.  Industrial  activity  seems  everywhere 
to  start  with  the  painting  of  the  body,  tattooing,  piercing  or  otherwise  dis- 
figuring separate  parts  of  the  body,  and  gradually  to  advance  to  the  produc- 
tion of  ornaments,  masks,  drawing  on  bark,  petrograms,  and  similar  play- 
products.  In  these  things  there  is  everywhere  displayed  a  peculiar  tendency 
to  imitate  the  animals  which  the  savage  meets  with  in  his  immediate  sur- 
roimdings,  and  which  he  looks  upon  as  his  equals.  .  .  .  Even  when  the  ad- 
vance is  made  to  the  construction  of  objects  of  daily  use  (pots,  stools,  etc.) 
the  animal  figure  is  retained  with  remarkable  regularity;  .  .  .  and  lastly,  in 
the  dances  of  primitive  peoples,  the  imitation  of  the  motions  and  the  cries  of 


WORK  271 

animals  play  the  principal  part.  ...  All  regularly  sustained  activity 
finally  takes  on  a  rhythmic  form  and  becomes  fused  with  music  and  song  in 
an  indivisible  whole. ^ 

Although  the  Scriptural  conception  of  work  as  a  curse,  involv- 
ing unpleasant  sweating  of  brows,  is  validated  by  much  of  daily- 
experience,  modem  economists  are  giving  increasing  attention  to 
the  more  pleasurable  kinds  of  work.  In  part  this  shift  of  emphasis 
is  doubtless  due  to  the  somewhat  higher  level  of  comfort  which 
people  of  today  enjoy,  as  compared  with  Scriptural  times;  in  part 
it  may  be  ascribed  to  the  acumen  of  earHer  generations  of  econ- 
omists who  perceived  that  many  of  the  '  privileged  classes  '  such 
as  clergy,  artists,  governmental  officials,  are  actually  producers, 
as  well  as  the  man  with  the  hoe;  and  that  the  earlier  hours  of 
almost  anyone's  labor  are  felt  to  be  pleasant.  But  to  the  '  mar- 
ginal unit '  of  labor,  and  to  many  units  somewhat  below  the 
margin,  there  are  psychic  resistances  to  labor  which  must  be  over- 
come by  positive  motives,  and  we  shall  now  attempt  some  use  of 
our  psychology  in  analyzing  both  the  positive  and  negative  forces 
concerned  in  work. 

The  most  obvious,  and  by  far  the  most  important,  motive  to 
labor  in  modern  societies  is  the  want  for  wealth,  which  is  desired 
as  a  means  toward  getting  goods  which  satisfy  the  individual's 
final  wants.  In  the  savage  state,  man,  like  the  brutes  under  our 
own  eyes,  was  impelled  by  his  immediate  wants  to  make  direct 
operations  on  nature,  such  as  gathering  nuts,  carcasses,  fruits,  — 
in  short,  to  carry  on  the  Crusoe-berry-picking  of  economic  lore. 
Economic  historians  call  this  earliest  stage  of  economy  '  collec- 
tional  economy,'  '  direct  appropriation,'  or  '  grubbing,  hunting 
and  fishing,'  and  they  point  out  that  the  stages  of  culture  —  an- 
imal culture  or  agriculture  —  were  possible  only  after  a  vast 
development  in  knowledge  and  discipline. 

Presently  human  groups  acquired  by  various  steps  the  tricks 
or  habits  of  division  of  labor  and  of  peaceful  bargain  and  sale  (in 
many  cases  division  of  labor  was  by  customary  communism  within 
a  tribe,  without  individual  sales),  and  the  generations  born  into 
this  more  advanced  culture  learned  from  their  fathers  these  artifi- 
^  Industrial  Evolution,  pp.  27,  28. 


272  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

cial  chains  of  causation  between  efforts  and  satisfactions.  Within 
the  limits  of  his  nature  and  nurture,  each  newcomer  adopts  that 
occupation  which  promises  to  give  him  the  largest  possible  want- 
fulfillment,  by  a  series  of  exchanges,  for  his  effort.  The  limitations 
on  the  knowledge  and  opportunities  of  every  human  being  are  so 
great  that  no  one,  probably,  finds  really  the  most  efficient  way  to 
satisfy  his  wants,  but  we  all  choose  the  best  according  to  our 
lights. 

Since  all  people  (disregarding  the  more  or  less  feeble-minded) 
are  in  some  degree  intelligent  in  perceiving  what  they  have  to  do 
to  satisfy  their  wants,  and  since  most  of  their  wants  are  to  be 
satisfied  by  purchase  through  wealth,  a  system  of  *  payment 
according  to  the  individual's  output '  is  always  a  reliable  way  of 
inducing  men  to  work.  Horses,  dogs,  rats,  to  the  extent  of  their 
learning  capacity,  also  '  labor  '  for  the  rewards  they  have  learned 
to  associate  with  certain  acts  of  their  own.  The  more  intelligent 
any  creature  is,  and  the  more  wants  he  has,  the  more  certainly  can 
he  be  coimted  upon  to  respond  to  true  causal  connections  between 
rewards  or  punishments  and  work.  The  more  stupid  or  easily 
satisfied  he  is,  the  more  immediate  must  the  stimulus  of  food  or 
hunger  or  whip  be  to  arouse  him  to  exertion.  Systems  both  of 
slavery  and  communism  find  it  worth  while  to  provide  at  least 
some  privations  or  extra  doles  of  food  and  other  comforts,  if  they 
are  to  get  the  most  work  done  by  their  laborers. 

There  are  many  facts  which  are  occasionally  brought  forward 
by  our  economic  heretics  to  contradict  this  principle,  but  the  con- 
tradictions will  not  stand  criticism.  For  example,  men  in  industry 
today  frequently  loaf  on  the  job,  —  but  mostly  when  they  have 
found  that  it  can  be  done  without  diminution  of  their  pay.  When 
a  *  scientific  management '  system  is  installed  which  apportions 
rewards  accurately  to  the  individual's  output,  the  workers  re- 
spond with  increased  production,  imless  other  motives  (mostly 
prudential  ones  also)  are  at  the  same  time  aroused  by  other  fac- 
tors in  the  situation.  The  trade  union  objections  to  the  system, 
in  other  words,  are  based  much  more  largely  upon  the  individual- 
istic fear  of  wages  per  unit  of  product  being  cut  than  upon  the 
moral  precept  that  all  ought  to  get  the  same  daily  wage. 


WORK  273 

Again,  suddenly  increased  wage  rates  sometimes  result  in 
diminished  production  because  the  workers  can  buy  their  cus- 
tomary cormnodities  for  fewer  days'  work,  and  prefer  for  the  time 
being  to  take  holidays  in  the  country  rather  than  earn  more 
money  by  working  full  time.  But  give  them  a  year  or  two,  or  in- 
crease their  pay  more  gradually,  and  the  proposition  that  wants 
for  purchasable  goods  increase  faster  than  the  individual's  money 
income  will  apply  to  them  also. 

A  third  apparent  contradiction  is  raised  by  the  case  of  some 
professional  and  business  men  and  state  officials,  who  are  said  to 
do  their  best  work  regardless  of  the  amount  of  their  pay.^  We 
shall  presently  try  to  analyze  further  the  truth  contained  in  this 
statement,  but  here  let  us  point  to  its  obvious  limitations.  Are 
there  no  grades  of  pay  in  any  of  these  services?  If  one  post  pays 
more  than  another,  is  it  purely  a  matter  of  luck  who  gets  the 
better  paying  posts?  The  observation  of  most  of  us  is  that  busi- 
ness executives,  professional  men,  and  governmental  servants 
usually  get  promoted  in  salary  only  when  they  become  '  worth  ' 
more;  their  pay,  as  well  as  that  of  the  humbler  laborer,  depends 
on  their  output,  and  this  fact  stimulates  them  to  do  their  best.  Of 
course  the  product  of  a  judge  or  of  a  professor  is  less  tangible  than 
that  of  a  coal-hewer,  and  so  there  is  more  chance  for  misjudgment 
by  those  who  determine  the  salaries  of  the  '  higher '  ranks.  When- 
ever, due  to  some  lack  of  connection  between  results  and  pay- 
ment, a  sinecure  exists,  the  general  judgment  is  that  the  holder  is 
not  apt  to  be  industrious  in  his  ostensible  occupation.  He  may 
have  better  things  to  do. 

Since  practically  all  men  are  so  nearly  dominated  by  the  wealth- 
getting  motive  in  their  attitude  toward  work  —  and  this  because 
so  large  a  proportion  of  the  goods  they  want,  whether  for  sub- 
sistence, play  or  love,  may  be  had  only  for  pay  —  economic  rea- 
soning based  upon  this  motive  alone  has  been  highly  serviceable 
in  the  statesman's  or  industrialist's  dealings  with  actual  economic 
life.  J.  S.  Mill,  in  his  earHer  years,  conceived  of  economic  science 
as  an  abstraction,  not  to  be  considered  true  of  the  real  man,  just  as 
Bagehot  did : 

^  See  for  example,  Hobson,  Work  and  Wealth,  Ch.  XIII. 


274  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

It  (political  economy)  does  not  treat  of  the  whole  of  man's  nature  as 
modified  by  the  social  state  nor  of  the  whole  conduct  of  man  in  society.  It 
is  concerned  with  him  solely  as  a  being  who  desires  to  possess  wealth,  and 
who  is  capable  of  judging  of  the  comparative  efiicacy  of  means  for  obtaining 
that  end.  It  predicts  only  such  of  the  phenomena  of  the  social  state  as  take 
place  in  consequence  of  the  pursuit  of  wealth.  It  makes  entire  abstraction  of 
every  other  human  passion  or  motive  except  those  which  may  be  regarded  as 
perpetually  antagonizing  principles  to  the  desire  of  wealth,  namely,  aversion 
to  labour,  and  desire  of  the  present  enjoyment  of  costly  indulgences.  These 
it  takes,  to  a  certain  extent,  into  its  calculations  because  those  do  not  merely, 
like  other  desires,  occasionally  conflict  with  the  pursuit  of  wealth,  but  ac- 
company it  always  as  a  drag,  or  impediment  and  are  therefore  inseparably 
mixed  up  in  the  consideration  of  it.^ 

Jevons  too,  who  based  his  economic  reasoning  avowedly  on  the 
strictest  hedonistic  premises  taken  from  Bentham,  did  not  sup- 
pose wealth  or  even  fame  to  be  the  sole  motives  in  work.  Ex- 
claiming his  admiration  of  the  neglected  researches  of  Cournot 
and  Gossen,  he  said: 

The  history  of  these  forgotten  works  is,  indeed,  a  strange  and  discouraging 
one;  but  the  day  must  come  when  the  eyes  of  those  who  cannot  see  wUl  be 
opened.  Then  will  due  honor  be  given  to  all  who  like  Cournot  and  Gossen 
have  laboured  in  a  thankless  field  of  human  knowledge,  and  have  met  with 
the  neglect  or  ridicule  they  might  well  have  expected.  Not  indeed  that  such 
men  do  reaUy  work  for  honour;  they  bring  forth  a  theory  as  the  tree  brings 
forth  its  fruit. 2 

Unmercenary  or  Non-Financial  Motives 

Any  science  must  always  be  in  some  degree  an  abstraction,  but 
its  development  consists  in  filling  in  more  and  more  subsidiary 
laws  which  bring  it  ever  closer  to  reahty.  A  number  of  econ- 
omists in  recent  years  have  been  delving  beyond  the  wealth 
motive  in  work  (as  well  as  beyond  '  aversion  to  labor  '),  and  are 
trying  to  discover  something  predictable  about  these  unmer- 
cenary or  non-financial  forces  (as  we  might  call  them,  for  want 
of  a  better  term) ;  and  business  men  through  personnel  managers 
are  actively  seeking  and  finding  incentives  to  work  which  are  not 
of  the  nature  of  economic  goods.  The  application  of  this  branch 
of  economics  to  the  problem  of  communism  or  sociaHsm  is  ob- 

^  Essays  on  Some  Unsettled  Questions,  pp.  137,  138  (written  1829  or  1830). 
2  Theory  of  Political  Economy,  Preface  to  2d  edition,  1879.    Page  xxxviii  of  4th 
edition. 


WORK  275 

vious,  since  such  systems  propose  to  dispense  entirely  with  the 
wealth-motive  in  work. 

Let  it  be  noticed,  however,  that  such  a  formula  as  '  psychic  in- 
come '  hardly  more  than  states  the  problem.   Fetter  says: 

It  may  be  seen  that  (anticipated)  total  psychic  income  is  what  motivates 
our  economic  activity,  —  at  least  as  far  as  this  activity  is  determined  by  con- 
scious purpose.  There  are  men  holding  public  office  to  whom  the  salary  re- 
ceived is  an  insignificant  consideration.  They  are  paid  largely  in  public 
esteem,  or  in  their  own  consciousness  of  duty  well  performed.  .  .  .  Man's 
psychic  life  is  the  thing  which  is  of  ultimate  concern  to  him,  etc' 

Similarly  Hume  stated  "Everything  in  the  world  is  purchased  by 
labour;  and  our  passions  are  the  only  causes  of  labour."  ^  (Hume's 
"passions"  are  roughly  equivalent  to  what  we  call  instincts.) 
True  so  far  as  they  go,  but  they  get  us  no  further  than  "We  do 
only  what  we  want  to  do,  and  we  want  not  merely  money."  Fet- 
ter's remarks  on  public  esteem  and  conscience  offer  some  clue,  but 
*  psychic  income  '  is  simply  what  other  economists  call  *  utility.' 
A  splendid  start  toward  understanding  the  unmercenary  incen- 
tives was  made  by  Adolf  Wagner  about  1879,  in  his  classification 
of  the  "Leading  Motives  in  Economic  Actions."  ^  Wagner  was  a 
keen  and  sympathetic  critic  of  sociaHsm,  and  his  discussion  was 
obviously  orientated  by  its  problems.  There  are  five  leading  eco- 
nomic motives,  he  said,  in  pairs  of  positive  and  negative,  as 
follows : 

1.  Desire  for  wealth  (wirtschaftUchen  Vorteil)  and  repugnance 
of  distress  for  lack  of  it  (Noth). 

2.  Fear  of  punishment,  and  hope  of  approval  (Anerkennung). 

3.  Desire  for  praise  (Geltungsstreben,  Ehrengefiihl),  and  fear 
of  shame  or  being  despised. 

4.  Impulse  to  activity  or  joy  in  doing,  and  dislike  of  inac- 
tivity. 

5.  The  moral  command,  and  fear  of  conscience. 

'  Economic  Principles,  p.  28. 

*  On  Commerce,  par.  12. 

'  Grundlegung,  Bk.  I,  pt.  i,  pp.  70-136  of  3d  edition.  "Die  Wirtschaftliche 
Natur  des  Menschen."  See  brief  condensation  of  this  analysis  in  Quar.  Jour.  Econ., 
i:  1 1 7-1 29. 


276  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

Provision  for  family  or  other  loved  ones  is  assigned  to  the  first 
class,  and  curiously,  he  thinks  only  No.  5  is  not  egoistic.  His 
wrestlings  with  these  riddles  of  hedonism  and  altruism,  and  his 
importations  from  the  leading  psychologists  of  his  time  (Wundt, 
Hoeffding,  and  others)  are  now  of  less  interest  than  is  the  wide 
historical  learning  with  which  he  attempts  to  trace  the  relative 
strength  of  these  motives  through  ancient  and  modem  times. 
Servile  labor,  depending  on  the  physical  punishment  motive 
almost  entirely,  has  been  gradually  replaced  by  hired  labor  be- 
cause the  latter  is  more  productive,  —  the  wealth  motive,  ap- 
parently, is  more  usable.  The  crucial  question  to  socialists  is 
whether,  in  attempting  to  dispense  with  the  wealth-drive,  they 
can  so  develop  the  motives  of  praise,  of  joy  in  activity  and  of  con- 
science, that  physical  punishment  will  not  be  necessary  on  a  con- 
siderable scale.  If  not,  their  indictment  of  hberalism  as  '  freedom 
to  starve  '  will  be  but  a  sorry  consolation  for  the  rigors  of  their 
conscripted  labor.  On  the  possibiHties  of  such  development  he 
was  not  sanguine.  The  large  faith  in  human  perfectibility, 
through  proper  education  of  the  youth,  which  had  inspired  alike 
such  early  socialists  as  Owen  and  Fourier,  and  such  extreme  indi- 
vidualists as  James  Mill  and  Bentham,  had  waned  with  increasing 
recognition  of  hereditary  egoistic  instincts,  and  of  the  rather 
limited  instinctive  groundwork  of  the  family  affections. 

Theory  of  Creative  Instincts 

Since  Wagner  there  had  been  no  important  additions  in  this 
branch  of  theory  —  in  fact,  few  economists  took  notice  of  it  — 
until  the  recent  vogue  of  the  '  creative  instinct '  doctrine.  This 
supposed  instinct  has  been  thought  by  many  writers  of  some 
standing  to  promise  a  radical  reform  of  our  ideas  on  work  and  to 
point  the  way  toward  a  great  reduction  in  industrial  discontent, 
—  perhaps  even  to  give  a  solid  scientific  basis  to  sociaHsm.  We 
have  discussed  the  psychological  standing  of  this  *  instinct  of 
workmanship  '  and  its  equivalents  pretty  fully  in  Chapter  X,  but 
some  further  examination  of  it,  from  the  standpoint  of  work,  is 
called  for  by  the  importance  of  the  issues. 


WORK  277 

It  will  be  remembered  that  William  James  sponsored  an  in- 
stinct of  construct! veness,  along  with  a  great  array  of  others,  in 
1890,  and  that  Veblen  started  to  write  about  the  instinct  of  work- 
manship in  1898.^  When  Veblen  expanded  his  theory  into  a  book 
in  1913,  his  psychological  authorities  (as  distinguished  from  an- 
thropological data)  boil  down  to  James  and  McDougall,  the  lat- 
ter being  greatly  indebted  to  the  former.  Citation  is  made  to 
Loeb's  Comparative  Physiology  of  the  Brain  and  Comparative 
Psychology  (published  1900),  but  Loeb's  utterances  on  the  in- 
stinct of  workmanship  appear  to  have  been  based  upon  Veblen 's 
earlier  article.  We  should  not  overlook  that  supposed  entity, 
'  invention,'  which  was  the  Tarde's  twin  of  '  imitation,'  nor 
Bergson's  *  creative  evolution,'  nor  John  Dewey's  '  creative  intel- 
hgence.'  All  these  doctrines,  but  especially  the  argument  used  by 
James,  from  bee  and  beaver  analogies,  have  contributed  to  the 
hypothesis  of  a  generalized  human  creative  or  workmanlike  in- 
stinct, which  underlies  the  recent  social-economic  writings  of 
Veblen,  Hobson,  Taussig,  Fisher,  Parker,  Marot,  Bertrand  Rus- 
sell,^ not  to  mention  numerous  lesser  lights. 

The  behavior  attributed  to  the  '  creative  impulse  '  varies 
somewhat  with  different  writers,  so  that  it  is  scarcely  possible  to 
deal  with  all  of  them  in  the  same  breath.  In  Veblen,  it  is  a  war 
against  waste,  a  passion  for  doing  whatever  the  other  instincts 
want  done,  in  the  most  eflScient  possible  manner.  With  Taussig 
it  is  simply  invention  of  a  new  as  well  as  a  more  efficient  way  of 
doing  whatever  is  to  be  done.  Marot  and  Hobson  emphasize  the 
human  craving  for  novelty,  which  is  supposed  to  be  '  creative- 
ness.'  But  all  agree  that  the  impulse  makes  at  least  some  kinds  of 
work  intrinsically  attractive  to  most  men  if  not  to  all,  that  it 
takes  no  thought  of  the  morrow,  and  causes  its  possessors  to  do 
good  work  without  regard  to  pay.  The  evidence  for  its  existence, 

^  "  The  Instinct  of  Workmanship  and  the  Irksomeness  of  Labor,"  Am.  Jour. 
Sociol.,  4:  187-201. 

2  J.  A.  Hobson,  Work  and  Wealth,  Ch.  IV,  "  The  Creative  Factor  in  Produc- 
tion"; Taussig,  Inventors  and  Moneymakers;  Irving  Fisher,  "Health  and  War," 
Am.  Labor  Leg.  Rev.,  8:  9-20  (1918);  C.  H.  Parker,  "Motives  in  Economic  Life," 
Proceedings  Am.  Econ.  Ass'n  1917;  Helen  Marot,  The  Creative  Impulse  in  Indus- 
try (1918);  B.  Russell,  Proposed  Roads  to  Freedom  (1919). 


278  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

apart  from  the  few  psychologists  referred  to,  is  from  the  testi- 
mony of  certain  persons  as  to  how  they  '  feel '  toward  their  work, 
and  from  the  objective  behavior  of  some  artists,  martyrs,  and 
other  riders  of  hobbies.  Our  characterizations,  however  mifair 
they  may  be  to  any  of  the  individual  authors  mentioned,  serve  to 
show  some  of  the  ambiguities  which  any  one  encounters  who  starts 
to  talk  about  man's  natural  creativeness  or  workmanship. 

Let  us  now  break  up  this  propensity  into  the  psychological 
elements  at  which  we  arrived  in  Part  II,  and  then  we  may  be  able 
to  answer  better  the  natural  question,  Why  shouldn't  we  use  the 
'  instinct  of  workmanship  '  as  a  postulate  in  our  theory  of  work, 
since  so  many  people  recognize  it  as  a  stable  human  trait? 

Prominent  among  the  well-authenticated  elements  of  this 
workmanlike  behavior  are  the  instinctive  responses  of  manipula- 
tion, and  of  visual  exploration  directed  toward  moving  or  unex- 
plored objects.  These  two  propensities  go  far  to  make  up  native 
'  curiosity.'  What  we  may  call  the  appetite  for  exercise  of  all  be- 
havior-mechanisms is  important  here  too;  it  causes  us  to  turn 
restlessly  from  one  occupation  to  another  as  the  mechanisms 
used  become  fatigued.  This  appetite,  together  with  the  curiosity 
responses  mentioned,  contributes  to  the  joint  result  we  call '  crav- 
ing for  novelty,'  or  '  adventure.'  Then  there  are  supposed  to  be 
individual  aptitudes  for  special  kinds  of  learning,  as  Woodworth 
has  brought  out,  which  incline  our  '  interests  '  in  different  direc- 
tions almost  from  the  first,  —  some  toward  any  of  the  multitude 
of  manual  occupations,  and  some  toward  any  of  the  variety  of 
reading,  reflecting  and  writing  vocations.  These  aptitudes  per- 
haps make  up  the  innate  basis  of  esthetic  preferences. 

Finally,  among  the  quasi-instinctive  springs  to  workmanship, 
is  the  enormously  important  desire  for  the  approval  of  one's  fel- 
lows. William  James'  remark  that  nine-tenths  of  the  world's 
work  is  done  by  emulation,  comes  easily  to  mind.  The  true  artist 
or  scholar  or  other  workman  does  indeed  serve  an  ideal,  and  he  is 
more  or  less  indifferent  to  what  other  people  actually  say  of  his 
work.  But  would  he  ever  develop  that  ideal  if  he  were  reared  in 
soHtude,  or  if  his  society  repressed  all  expressions  of  praise  and 
blame?   We  cannot  believe  it;  the  imperceptible  transition  from 


WORK  279 

striving  to  be  praised  (in  good  part,  we  admit,  due  to  the  associa- 
tions with  more  tangible  rewards  and  punishments  which  praises 
carry)  in  childhood,  by  successive  steps  to  the  desire  for  only 
discriminating  praise,  is  too  plain  to  be  mistaken,  when  once  we 
have  learned  that  associative  links  are  continually  dropping  out 
of  consciousness.  The  long-standing  bugaboo  against  associa- 
tionism,  that  various  inner  commands  are  innate  because  the  sub- 
ject is  not  conscious  of  any  connection  between  them  and  more 
primitive  impulses,  loses  its  potency  when  one  realizes  that  all 
manner  of  associative  connections  are  forgotten  in  the  same  way. 
Who  can  tell  just  what  experiences  taught  him  to  be  afraid  of  the 
dark?  Or  why  he  likes  or  dislikes  people  at  first  sight  of  them? 
In  fact,  if  we  were  conscious  of  all  associative  links  we  should  be 
simply  remembering  everything  we  ever  experienced. 

Veblen,  in  his  Theory  of  the  Leisure  Class,  showed  how  the 
impulses  of  emulation  build  up  "pecuniary  canons  of  taste,"  — 
cause  us  to  think  obviously  expensive  commodities  to  be  intrin- 
sically beautiful.  This  associationism  might  have  helped  him  to  a 
truer  theory  of  the  "sense  of  workmanship."  Conscious  pursuit 
of  excellence  for  its  own  sake,  therefore,  we  attribute  to  associa- 
tions with  human  approval,  which  apparently  in  part  is  instinc- 
tively sought,  but  which  also  is  grounded  in  many  associations  of 
*  utilities  '  which  have  resulted  from  other  people's  approval  of  us. 

There  are,  moreover,  many  other  habitual  elements  in  the  drive 
of  workmanship.  The  foregoing  innate  springs  of  action,  inter- 
acting with  external  circumstances,  force  the  subject  to  take  up  an 
occupation.  As  he  learns  it,  the  acquired  mechanisms  become 
more  and  more  smoothly  operative,  many  of  the  antagonistic  re- 
sponses of  mere  clumsiness  are  lost;  and  so,  as  Woodworth  says, 
every  acquired  mechanism  becomes  something  of  a  drive  by  itself. 
It  is  along  this  line  that  we  account  for  the  curious  attractiveness 
which  problems  possess  that  are  suited  to  our  capacity.  As  a 
system  of  knowledge  is  enlarged,  say  in  history  or  language  or 
baseball  lore,  not  only  are  details  more  easily  remembered  because 
of  the  increasing  number  of  associations  which  reach  out  to  meet 
them,  but  the  pursuit  of  such  missing  links  becomes  increasingly 
vigorous.   This  result  is  facilitated,  to  be  sure,  by  the  withering 


28o  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

from  disuse  of  other  interests  that  originally  competed  strongly 
with  the  one  which  was  elected  to  be  intensively  cultivated. 

Now,  what  difference  does  it  make,  whether  or  not  we  call  this 
complex  mechanism  an  instinct  of  workmanship?  We  reply,  the 
crucial  question  on  which  the  dispute  bears  is,  can  the  majority  of 
men  be  trusted  or  trained  to  work  equally  well  and  wisely, 
whether  or  not  their  rewards  are  proportioned  to  their  individual 
production?  And  a  point  of  only  less  importance  is  how  to  reduce 
the  '  human  costs  '  in  work,  by  attention  to  the  instincts.  It  is 
only  by  close  attention  to  each  element  in  this  so-called  creative 
instinct  that  we  can  make  our  arrangements  for  education  and  for 
work  most  effective.  The  instincts  which  make  up  curiosity  and 
the  desire  for  novelty,  for  example,  are  naturally  favorable  to  dis- 
covery of  truth,  but  not  to  sustained  labor  which  is  monotonous. 
It  is  only  by  poetic  Hcense,  moreover,  that  one  can  call  such  be- 
havior as  we  see  in  the  infant's  manipulations  (showing  these  in- 
stincts nearly  naked)  '  creative.'  If  we  rehed  on  these  instincts 
alone,  our  work  would  be  desultory  and  inconsecutive  and  hence 
unproductive,  like  the  activities  of  men  in  savage  times. 

The  drive  of  habitual  elements,  on  the  other  hand,  will  be 
constant,  whatever  the  discipUnary  measures  by  which  these 
habits  were  originally  instilled.  Our  ordinary  social  and  moral 
habits  become  second  nature  and  not  unpleasant,  when  they  are 
finally  inculcated  by  sufficient  spankings;  and  similar  it  is  with 
habits  of  industry.  Training  is  most  effective,  however,  when  it 
follows  the  line  of  individual  aptitude;  this  fact  also  is  well-known 
to  common  experience.  And  unlike  other  elements,  the  desire  for 
approval  may  be  counted  on  always  to  give  a  bias  toward  socially 
serviceable  activity.  People  are  most  likely  to  approve  in  us  that 
conduct  which  is  most  favorable  to  themselves.  The  acclaim 
which  soldiers  have  always  had  is  in  no  small  measure  thus  to  be 
accounted  for,  although  there  are  also  many  misleading  associa- 
tions which  cause  admiration  to  be  bestowed  on  those  people  who 
are  in  fact  harmful  to  the  admirers. 

It  is  of  the  greatest  import,  therefore,  to  know  whether  the  im- 
pulse to  do  useful  and  efficient  work  is  innate  or  is  built  up  by 
associations  of  praise;  for  if  social  control  were  invoked  by  gov- 


WORK  281 

emors  not  only  to  dispense  with  private  property  but  to  suppress 
all  personal  praise  —  which  Robert  Owen  was  inclined  to  do  ^  — 
the  society  might  well  find  its  '  instinct  of  workmanship  '  was  fast 
disappearing.  For  any  engineering  or  therapeutic  work,  we  can 
scarcely  have  our  physics  and  physiology  too  accurate. 

Fear,  Pugnacity,  Loyalty 

Other  unmercenary  motives  in  work  may  be  briefly  mentioned. 
The  reactions  of  fear  and  of  escape  from  pain  and  confinement  are 
at  bottom  instinctive  and  are  extremely  urgent,  and  the  force  of 
them  may  be  transferred  to  other  stimuli  by  association.  They 
are  thus  tied  artificially  to  a  task  when  used  as  punishments  in 
case  the  work  is  not  done  satisfactorily.  This  process  of  arti- 
ficially tying  an  original  drive  to  a  stimulus  that  was  natively  in- 
different or  repulsive,  is  shown  most  clearly  by  the  bliilding  up  of 
the  wealth  motive  under  division  of  labor.  '  Fear  '  of  disgrace  or 
of  poverty,  on  the  other  hand,  are  not  instinctive  fear;  these  are 
imaginative  thwartings  of  the  habitual  seekings  for  wealth  and 
for  approval.  The  inner  fear  reactions  do,  it  is  true,  easily  become 
attached  to  all  manner  of  stimuli,  —  witness  the  shock  we  feel  at 
many  an  unexpected  sight  or  sound. 

It  is  sometimes  said  that  the  fear  motives,  in  mild  form,  are 
intrinsic  incentives  to  certain  kinds  of  *  work,'  —  to  adventure, 
exploration,  gambling,  or  daredevil  feats.  Possibly;  but  there  are 
many  other  elements  in  the  love  of  adventure  too,  —  the  acclaim 
to  successful  pioneers,  curiosity,  and  the  booty  hoped  for.  So 
that  whatever  fear  exists  may  still  be  a  deterrent,  although  bolder 
spirits  are  less  affected  by  it  in  merely  imaginative  form. 

The  energy  of  the  pugnacious  or  rage  responses  can  conceivably 
be  put  to  work  by  skillfully  arranged  contexts.  When  the  desire 
for  approval  is  obstructed,  as  by  ridicule,  reproof  or  challenge,  the 
worker's  anger  is  aroused,  and  some  of  his  ire  will  be  vented  on  his 
task.  It  is  quite  common  to  speak  of  the  spur  of  *  righteous 
anger  '  to  reformers,  physicians,  soldiers.  As  will  be  explained  in 
a  moment,  however,  anger  in  the  industrial  world  is  usually 
opposed  to  work. 

^  F.  Podmore,  Robert  Owen,  p.  177. 


282  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

Love,  loyalty,  devotion  are  names  which  apply,  as  Shand  and 
McDougall  have  shown,  not  to  pure  instincts  but  to  complexes  of 
instincts  and  habits  which  converge  upon  some  external  objects, 
such  as  country,  home,  God,  friends.  It  is  very  difficult,  therefore, 
to  generalize  to  any  good  purpose,  about '  loyalty,'  as  if  it  were  an 
instinct.  The  usual  connection  between  love  and  work  is  through 
the  goods  which  work  procures  for  loved  ones.  It  is  interesting  to 
use  these  familiar  devotions  as  analogies  in  speculation  on  how 
patriotism,  for  example,  might  gradually  be  extended  to  include 
industrial  service,  and  how  by  kindly  and  honest  services  business 
houses  can  promote  loyalty  among  their  employees. 

The  scope  of  original  love  is,  we  have  seen,  exceptionally  iU- 
defined.  '  Liking  '  and  '  loving  '  are  akin  in  popular  speech,  but 
psychologically,  liking  or  seeking  is  characteristic  of  the  whole 
range  of  positive  or  pleasant  reactions.  Any  object  associated 
with  a  pleasant  response  may  become  likable,  and,  so  far  as  con- 
sciousness reveals,  wanted  for  its  own  sake.  McDougall  speaks  a 
little  as  if  any  unselfish  motive  must  have  some  of  the  parental 
impulse  in  it,  but  we  have  seen  that  '  selfish  '  seeking  for  social 
approval  often  leads  to  the  most  altruistic  conduct,  and  that  such 
conduct  becomes  so  habitual  that  the  original  self-reference  be- 
comes entirely  obscured  to  the  subject.  (McDougall  recognizes 
this  fact  in  his  account  of  the  *  self-regarding  sentiment.') 

The  emulative  motives,  ranging  from  mere  desire  for  society 
and  friendly  intercourse  and  approval  with  dread  of  anything  like 
ostracism,  to  strife  for  preeminence  and  mastery  (and  to  envy  of 
others  who  succeed  better  in  these  respects),  are  to  be  counted  in 
here  again.  When  they  are  considered  as  part  of  the  '  creative 
impulse,'  they  have  been  refined  to  the  ideal  of  praiseworthiness; 
but  the  more  common  case,  we  all  know,  is  that  of  working  for  the 
approval  of  real  persons,  —  and  the  more  there  are  of  them  the 
better.  Most  of  us  will  sacrifice  praiseworthiness  if  only  we  can 
get  the  visible  marks  of  distinction.  This  group  of  motives  is 
susceptible  in  an  unusual  degree  of  being  harnessed  to  tasks  with- 
out the  medium  of  material  reward;  work  whose  payment  is 
known  to  be  chiefly  in  esteem  is  something  quite  familiar.  Every 
mother  uses  this  principle  at  times,  and  business  houses  are  be- 


WORK  283 

coming  conscious  that  competitions  among  their  employees  may 
be  used  to  the  benefit  of  all  concerned.  Hierarchies,  as  in  the 
priesthood,  academic  circles,  and  the  army,  seem  clearly  to  provide 
spurs  to  energy  in  addition  to  the  material  emoluments,  and  they 
are  the  more  effective,  just  as  money  payments  are,  the  more 
accurately  that  prizes  are  apportioned  to  merit.  Adam  Smith 
was  a  keen  psychologist,  as  usual,  when  he  remarked: 

And  thus,  place,  that  great  object  which  divides  the  wives  of  aldermen, 
is  the  end  of  half  the  labors  of  human  life.  .  .  .  Rank,  distinction,  pre- 
eminence, no  man  despises,  unless  he  is  either  raised  very  much  above,  or 
sunk  very  much  below,  the  ordinary  standard  of  human  nature.' 

Inventors  and  Money  Makers 

Let  us  consider  for  a  moment  the  psychology  of  a  pecuHarly 
important  kind  of  work,  —  the  improvement  of  the  industrial 
arts.  This  is  the  function  of  both  the  inventor  and  the  entre- 
preneur or  manager,  and  their  services  correspond  to  two  phases 
of  the  learning  or  reasoning  process;  the  inventor  as  such  suggests 
a  technical  solution  of  an  economic  problem,  and  the  entre- 
preneur tries  it  out  in  the  whole  economic  situation. 

Taussig's  treatment  of  this  topic  is  in  the  main  admirable, 
though,  as  we  have  indicated,  the  '  instinct  of  contrivance  '  sug- 
gests a  misleading  oversimplification. 

Invention  is  the  finding  of  new  combinations  of  old  tricks  or 
responses,  which  will  enable  us  successfully  to  deal  with  a  baffling 
situation.  It  is  simply  an  act  of  reasoning,  and  like  all  reasoning,  is 
carried  out  by  trial  and  error.  The  instincts  comprehended  under 
contrivance,  manipulation  and  curiosity,  undoubtedly  play  a  part 
in  invention,  especially  in  making  the  work  attractive,  regardless 
of  material  rewards;  but  the  direction  of  people's  abilities  toward 
certain  kinds  of  invention  is,  as  Taussig  says,  furthered  by  the 
prospect  of  gain.  We  are  all  inventors  of  one  kind  or  another,  for 
we  all  solve  problems.^   Cats  are  inventors;  when  their  activities 

^  See  above,  Ch.  V. 

^  Tarde's  "invention  and  imitation"  is  a  suggestive  formula  of  social  develop- 
ment; and  it  is  quite  true  that  new  tricks  spread  in  circles  from  the  point  of  origin. 
But  in  our  view  both  invention  and  imitation  are  acts  of  learning,  and  when  we 
realize  the  ramifications  of  the  learning  process  the  formula  does  not  look  so  simple. 


284  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

are  directed  toward  certain  problems  in  puzzle-boxes  by  the  pros- 
pect of  food,  they  invent  solutions  to  those  special  problems 
rather  than  solutions  to  others,  such  as  getting  at  mice  or  balls  of 
twine.  And  if  a  good  living  were  assured  to  all  of  us  who  would 
devote  our  time  to  contriving  new  devices  of  any  kind,  without 
regard  to  their  practical  usefulness,  we  can  hardly  doubt  that  a 
great  craft  of  inventors  would  soon  develop.  It  is  true  that  neces- 
sity is  the  mother  of  invention,  for  all  our  reasoning,  as  we  have 
seen,  is  always  done  in  the  forked-road  situations  where  a  solution 
is  necessary  in  order  to  quiet  our  purposes.  Not  all  these  search- 
ing purposes,  to  be  sure,  are  severely  practical;  some  of  them  may 
develop  out  of  instinctive  explorative  responses  which  may  be 
called  *  idle  '  curiosity. 

That  the  inventive  bent  is  stronger  in  some  people  than  in 
others,  and  that  it  turns,  in  different  individuals,  to  varying 
classes  of  problems,  is  but  one  illustration  of  the  general  fact  which 
psychology  is  coming  to  acknowledge  without  being  able  as  yet  to 
explain,  —  that  there  are  innate  individual  peculiarities  of  pro- 
clivity or  interest,  which  are  not  detailed  instincts,  but  which 
direct  in  a  general  way  the  individual's  learning,  making  him  more 
interested  in  one  subject-matter  than  another,  enabling  him  to 
work  hard  at  it  and  to  do  well  in  its  execution.  Poeta  nascitur,  non 
fit,  and  similarly  with  inventors,  musicians,  athletes,  and  all  per- 
sons with  hobbies.  As  Taussig  concludes,  the  inventing  genius 
shades  off  into  our  common  ingenuity,  and  while  the  great  inven- 
tor will  almost  starve,  if  necessary,  to  ply  his  beloved  trade  — 
just  as  the  poet  and  vagabond  will  —  there  is  no  question  that  re- 
wards of  wealth  turn  lesser  lights  toward  inventing,  and  turn  all 
inventors  in  some  degree  toward  the  problems  that  are  most  im- 
portant economically.  As  to  the  need  of  giving  big  prizes  to  the 
geniuses,  that  is  a  problem  common  to  all  economic  motives,  and 
it  properly  belongs  to  the  subject  of  economic  welfare. 

The  Business  Man  as  Inventor 

In  regard  to  the  business  man  as  competitive  director  of  eco- 
nomic processes,  he  is  always  partly  an  inventor,  for  he  must 
continually  devise  new  combinations  of  methods  to  meet  the 


WORK  285 

existing  circumstances.  And  he  not  only  devises  methods  but  he 
tries  them  out  and  stakes  his  wages  on  their  success.  The  risk 
incident  to  new  ventures  is  therefore  really  characteristic  of  the 
business  man;  a  business  man  who  makes  more  than  wages  and 
yet  runs  no  more  than  a  laborer's  risk  is  in  fact  a  landlord,  is  the 
proprietor  of  an  external  source  of  differential  gain. 

As  we  have  seen  in  our  consideration  of  the  motives  to  adven- 
ture, it  is  doubtful  if  risk  in  its  pure  state  is  an  allurement  to  any- 
one ;  the  case  is  simply  that  the  lure  of  possible  gain  overcomes  the 
disinclination  from  fear  of  loss.  With  the  increase  of  knowledge, 
risk  becomes  more  clearly  a  cost,  which  will  be  incurred  only  on 
some  kind  of  insurance  principles.  Business  profits  are  a  rough 
kind  of  insurance;  and  in  all  lotteries,  the  greater  the  chance  of 
loss,  in  general  the  larger  must  be  the  uncertain  prize.  But  we 
should  not  argue  that  this  tendency  is  at  all  exact;  the  obstacles 
of  ignorance  and  of  obsolete  habits  are  to  be  reckoned  with.  The 
argument  is  rather  that  judgment  on  the  timeliness  of  new  de- 
vices in  the  whole  economic  situation  —  judgment  whether  the 
device  will  '  pay,'  which  means  whether  people  will  want  it 
badly  enough  to  pay  all  the  costs  involved  in  devising,  making  and 
selling  it  —  and  assumption  of  the  risks  connected  with  that 
judgment,  constitute  a  productive  service  as  much  as  the  tech- 
nical contrivance.  At  this  point  we  take  issue  with  Veblen,  who 
thinks  the  technical  men  are  the  real  producers,  on  whom  the 
men  who  accidentally  own  capital  fatten  parasitically.  The  use  of 
monopoly  power  to  bargain  unfairly  with  penniless  inventors  is  of 
course  a  phase  of  our  existing  situation  that  is  to  be  reckoned  with, 
but  the  inference  that  society  would  be  best  served  by  turning  the 
control  of  industry  over  to  the  technical  men  is  too  hasty. 

As  the  business  man  is  always  something  of  an  inventor  himself, 
he  partakes  of  the  intrinsic  rewards  of  inventing,  by  the  satisfac- 
tion of  curiosity,  and  his  other  contriving  instincts.  Loyalty  to  an 
enterprise  he  has  been  identified  with,  and  pride  in  its  reputation, 
are,  of  course,  strong  motive  forces.  The  appeal  of  personal 
domination,  which  is  in  between  emulation  and  rage,  is  a  force  in 
business  direction  too,  but  only  because  society  has  not  further 
limited  the  power  which  control  of  industry  gives,  nor  instilled 


286  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

sufl&cient  habits  of  thought  concerning  social  welfare,  to  run 
counter  to  the  domination  motives.  As  to  the  wealth  motive,  the 
same  remarks  as  made  above  concerning  inventors  apply. 

The  Irksomeness  of  Labor  —  Fatigue 

Let  us  now  inquire  more  closely  into  the  nature  of  the  psychic 
resistances  to  work.  It  is  widely  recognized  now,  that  although 
labor  may  be,  on  the  whole,  a  curse,  it  is  by  no  means  always  irk- 
some. Probably  most  of  us  feel  a  predominating  enjoyment  of  our 
work  during  the  earlier  part  of  the  day,  or  at  least  in  certain 
moods.  But  whenever  the  work  is  felt  to  be  distinctly  irksome, 
that  fact  may  probably  be  ascribed  to  unpleasant  or  negative  re- 
actions, chiefly  of  the  obscure  inner  sort  that  Cannon  studied. 
These,  in  turn,  are  to  be  traced  to  any  of  at  least  three  fairly  dis- 
tinct sources,  namely,  (i)  fatigue  and  ill  health,  (2)  disagreeable 
surroundings  at  work,  (3)  thwarted  positive  impulses  (oppor- 
tunity cost). 

Most  obvious  is  the  double  source  of  fatigue  and  ill  health.  We 
class  them  together  because  fatigue  may  in  part  be  conceived  as 
temporary  illness,  in  which  the  acid  products  of  exertion  in  the 
body  give  rise  to  unpleasant  reactions  or  inhibitions  (which  we 
have  lumped  together  as  "the  appetite  of  repose,"  on  account  of 
the  recurring  character  of  the  condition)  comparable  to  the  ef- 
fects produced  by  toxins  and  bacteria  in  disease.  The  energy- 
stores  of  the  neuro-muscular  mechanisms  just  used,  become,  of 
course,  considerably  depleted,  yet  in  the  muscles  and  nerve-fibers 
themselves  the  exhaustion  is  not  complete  in  severe  fatigue. 
Stimulation  of  these  muscles  is  still  possible  through  other  circuits, 
with  an  incidental  repression  of  the  subjective  evidence  of  fatigue. 
Such  is  the  case  when  young  people  who  have  become  tired  by 
working  during  the  day  go  to  a  dance  at  night,  or  when  martial 
music  suddenly  reaches  the  weary  traveler.^ 

Doubtless  there  are  always  numerous  dormant  reserves  like 
these,  which  can  be  tapped  by  proper  variation  in  the  stimuli 
of  the  situation.  Many  factories  are  instituting  fifteen-minute 
rest  periods  in  the  midst  of  each  half-day  (reminiscent  of  the 

^  P.  G.  Stiles,  The  Nervous  System  and  its  Conservation  (1914),  Ch.  VIII. 


WORK  287 

'recess  '  of  school  days!);  the  success  of  which  probably  depends 
more  on  the  '  moral '  refreshment  than  on  purely  muscular  re- 
cuperation. In  some  cases  music  is  served  up  with  the  work.^ 
It  must  be  conceded  that  this  process  of  tapping  reserves  in  many 
cases  cannot  be  done  day  after  day  without  injury  to  the  health. 
Dancing  of  evenings  can  be  overdone.  Yet  we  are  by  no  means  to 
presume  that  any  extra  zeal  aroused  on  the  job  by  psychological 
devices  reduces  the  worker's  health  or  strength  or  recreation. 
Even  if  it  be  assumed  that  his  total  output  of  energy  day  by  day 
is  constant,  which  is  not  probable,  the  extra  work  done  in  the 
mood  of  contentment  may  merely  use  the  energy  which  otherwise 
would  be  spent  in  '  kicking  against  the  pricks,'  that  is,  in  the  sum 
of  the  reactions  which  try  to  avoid  the  unpleasant  situation. 

Monotony  is  a  real  curse  in  work.  Any  narrow  set  of  responses 
early  becomes  fatigued,  and  the  fresh  impulses  held  in  leash  give 
rise  to  an  unpleasant  restlessness.  Something  of  monotony  is  not 
lacking  in  any  activity  under  the  sun,  but  it  is  accentuated  to  the 
last  degree  in  the  semi-automatic  machine  feeder  which  division  of 
labor  has  finally  produced.  To  the  psychologist's  provocative 
remark  that  feeble-minded  people  make  the  best  machine  opera- 
tors, it  is  sometimes  replied  with  some  truth  that  many  workers 
like  a  narrow  routine,  because  the  performance  of  it  becomes  so 
automatic  by  habit  that  they  are  imaginatively  released  to  live  in 
a  world  of  fancy.  The  last  thing  they  want  to  do,  this  reply  con- 
tinues, is  to  have  to  think  about  their  work,  to  solve  fresh  prob- 
lems continually.  But  the  best  test  thus  far  available  lies  in  the 
figures  of  *  labor  turnover.'  These  statistics  are  said  to  show  that 
workers  stay  at  the  repetitive  jobs  a  shorter  time,  on  the  average, 
than  at  work  involving  more  variety,^  although  the  material  has 
not  been  carefully  studied  from  this  point  of  view. 

^  Phonographs  were  installed  in  three  sorting  rooms  of  the  Minneapolis  post 
offices  and  played  frequently  while  some  fifty  night  clerks  worked.  A  comparison 
of  two  nights  when  equal  amounts  of  mail  were  sorted  by  an  equal  number  of  clerks 
at  three  stations,  one  night  without  music,  one  with  music,  showed  that  14  per  cent 
more  errors  were  made  on  the  evening  without  music,  and  the  total  time  taken  was 
also  about  12  per  cent  longer  the  evening  without  music.  These  comparisons  were 
made  about  a  week  after  the  installation  was  first  made.  See  Minneapolis  Tribune, 
August  21, 1921. 

^  Link  (Employment  Psychology,  p.  112)  makes  the  statement  based  upon  care- 


288  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

It  is  to  be  noticed,  however,  that  no  large  proportion  of  even 
factory  work  is  of  this  extremely  monotonous  character.  Slichter 
says: 

It  is  doubtful  whether  half  of  factory  workers  are  engaged  in  highly  repet- 
itive work.  Most  unskilled  laborers,  truckers,  Ivunpers,  most  skilled  laborers 
(artisans) ,  and  many  semi-skiUed  hand  laborers  are  engaged  in  work  which  is 
not  a  repetition  of  the  identical  movements. 

The  tendency,  he  continues,  clearly  is  for  the  repetitive  nature  of  factory 
work  to  increase,  and  "scientific  management"  with  its  policy  of  subdividing 
and  standardizing  has  given  the  tendency  a  great  impetus.^ 

The  manager's  ideal  seems  to  be  reached  in  something  like  the 
Ford  Motor  shops,  where  nearly  all  the  operations  are  so  minute 
that  anyone  can  soon  learn  to  repeat  them.  But  machinery  that 
has  become  semi-automatic  is  well  on  the  way  to  becoming  com- 
pletely automatic,  which  is  the  best  case  of  all. 

The  upshot  of  it  is  that  fatigue-effects  and  '  the  case  for  the 
shorter  working  day  '  are  not  quite  synonymous.  Short  working 
hours,  to  be  sure,  have  many  potentiaHties  in  the  way  of  cultural 
and  civic  development  outside  the  working  place,  and  no  doubt 
their  recreational  effect  is  often  sufficient  to  increase  production. 
Comparative  studies  on  production  as  compared  with  hours  of 
labor  are  of  extreme  importance.    But  continual  shortening  of 

ful  study  of  conditions  in  a  large  American  munitions  factory,  that  "The  turnover, 
among  such  (machine)  operators,  is  unusually  large  for  a  variety  of  reasons,  most 
prominent  among  which  is  the  monotony  and  strain  of  the  work." 

Shchter,  who  has  made  the  most  elaborate  analysis  of  turnover  figures  in  general, 
gives  the  same  impression,  saying  that  to  interest  men  in  their  work  there  must  be 
"  more  or  less  variety.  The  same  thing  done  continuously  soon  becomes  tiresome 
physically  and  mentally"  (The  Turnover  of  Factory  Labor,  p.  i88).  He  also 
finds  (Ch.  IV)  that  the  turnover  is  strikingly  high  in  certain  relatively  unattractive 
jobs  within  a  given  plant,  and  especially  monotonous  work  falls  in  this  class. 

It  is  interesting  that  Herbert  Spencer  hit  this  nail  on  the  head:  "Clearly  these 
adjustments  brought  in  on  account  of  mechanical  inventions  make  the  motions  of 
the  workman  himself  relatively  automatic.  At  the  same  time  the  monotonous  atten- 
tion required,  taxing  special  parts  of  the  nervous  system  and  leaving  others  inactive, 
entaUs  positive  as  well  as  negative  injury"  (Sociology,  IV,  p.  253).  Reitell,  who 
quotes  this  statement  (Jour.  Pol.  Econ.  26:  274),  presents  evidence  from  the  steel 
industry  to  show  that  such  effects  are  offset  by  the  greater  productivity  of  labor  and 
exemption  from  many  strenuous  tasks  which  machinery  has  brought  about.  Cf. 
Taussig,  Inventors  and  Money-Makers,  p.  62. 

1  Op.  ciL,  pp.  188,  189. 


WORK  289 

hours  is  not  necessarily  the  only  nor  the  best  remedy  for  fatigue 
and  monotony.  Deliberate  arrangements  for  variety  in  tasks,  for 
the  stimulation  of  initiative  and  ingenuity/  especially  by  well- 
planned  lines  of  promotion  and  by  marks  of  distinction  for  merit, 
are  already  used  by  progressive  employers  in  conjunction  with 
reasonable  hours  to  secure  the  maximum  of  production  and  com- 
fort. 

The  use  of  music,  singing  and  dancing  as  recreative  and  stimu- 
lating features  in  the  workshop  is  a  return  to  an  age-long  practice, 
connected  obscurely  with  the  physiology  of  rhythm.  The  eminent 
German  economist  Biicher  has  investigated  this  matter  histori- 
cally, and  finds  that  from  the  earliest  times  people  have  been 
wont  to  carry  on  various  tasks  '  to  the  time  '  of  chanting  or  other 
music.  The  frontispiece  of  his  Arbeit  and  Rhythmus  shows  an 
ancient  Greek  sculpture  of  four  workers  kneading  bread  while  a 
fifth  is  playing  the  flute;  and  the  book  contains  a  large  collection 
of  work  songs  from  different  lands  and  times  in  numerous  occupa- 
tions. All  of  us  are  somewhat  famiHar  with  sailors'  chanteys, 
smiths'  songs,  and  marching  tunes,  and  with  the  person  who 
spontaneously  sings  or  whistles  at  his  work. 

The  difficult  question  is  as  to  the  relationship,  —  what's  the 
reason  for  it?  Some  cooperative  activities,  such  as  working  a 
windlass,  prying  at  a  heavy  weight,  performing  a  gymnastic 
figure,  are  evidently  much  faciHtated  as  to  coordination  by 
sounds  or  other  signals  adjusted  to  the  technical  rhythm  of  the 
work.^  But  in  many  efforts  Hke  the  bread  baking,  marching  and 
dancing,  we  go  out  of  our  way  to  perform  in  concert  to  music. 
We  like  to  do  them  better  that  way.  To  a  considerable  extent 
this  pleasure  is  associative;  the  music,  even  during  work,  calls  up 

1  Meyer  Bloomfield,  a  leader  in  the  new  profession  of  employment  management, 
has  given  some  suggestions  toward  encouraging  employees  to  "  think  on  the  job." 
See  R.  W.  Kelly,  Hiring  the  Worker  (1918),  p.  48. 

*  A  modern  factory  example  of  this  kind  is  suggested  by  Link:  "The  prelim- 
inary study  of  typical  dial  machines  had  revealed  that  the  fundamental  requirement 
was  the  ability  to  acquire  a  certain  bodily  rhythm  in  feeding  material  into  the  dial 
and  in  timing  the  movements  of  the  hand  and  arm  with  those  of  the  machine.  Some 
operators  acquired  this  rhythm  very  readUy,  others  only  after  a  long  time,  and  still 
others  never."  Op.  cit.,  p.  118.  Apparently  music  would  have  been  valuable  in  this 
case. 


290  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

the  pleasant  recreative  responses  that  were  active  formerly  along 
with  the  musical  sounds,  and  these  responses,  by  secretions  or 
otherwise,  reinforce  our  work  responses,  as  does  other  emotional 
excitement.  Beyond  these  points  there  may  well  be  ways  of  play- 
ing on  iimate  rhythm-mechanisms  to  promote  work,  but  the  mat- 
ter is  still  too  obscure  to  make  further  comment  worth  while  at 
this  place. 

Disagreeable  Surroundings  and  Indignity 

The  second  class  of  causes  of  irksomeness  in  work  includes  dis- 
agreeable odors,  sounds,  heat,  dampness  or  darkness,  dust,  fumes, 
lint,  and  so  on.  Nature  has  provided  some  protection  against 
these  offenses  by  the  wonderful  mechanisms  of  adaptation  in  the 
sense-organs,  so  that  the  worker  gradually  becomes  inured  to 
them.  Such  protection  is  inadequate,  however,  and  when  labor 
becomes  scarce  the  turnover  figures  show  up  the  more  repulsive 
working  conditions  and  it  becomes  profitable  to  make  consider- 
able expenditures  to  abolish  them. 

A  third  case  of  repugnance  to  labor  is  found  in  impleasant  or 
negative  reactions  which  are  stimulated  by  the  thwarting  of  posi- 
tive impulses  or  by  circiunstances  not  covered  by  the  preceding 
groups.  In  studying  the  instincts  of  rage,  we  learned  that  these 
are  stimulated  by  the  hampering  of  nearly  any  other  response 
which  has  been  started.  Compulsion  seems  to  be  instinctively 
fought.  Unreasoning  anger  and  insistence  on  personal  domination 
is  an  outstanding  feature  of  labor  struggles,  on  both  sides,  accord- 
ing to  all  observers,  and  these  impulses  are  usually  born  of  original 
disputes  over  wages.  Even  in  self-imposed  tasks,  the  element  of 
compulsion  often  makes  us  rebel,  run  away,  commit  sabotage 
against  ourselves.  The  characteristic  vagueness  and  idiosyncrasy 
of  introspection  make  the  situation  difiicult  to  analyze,  but  it 
seems  clear  that  when  we  can  work  whole-heartedly,  which  means 
that  the  vagrant  impulses  are  not  stirring,  whatever  unpleasant- 
ness tinges  our  consciousness  may  be  traced  to  the  other  two 
cases.  In  this  direction  the  Freudian  doctrines  will  ultimately  be 
of  service,  when  they  have  become  more  closely  aligned  with 
physiology. 


WORK  291 

The  motives  centering  about  social  approval  or  disapproval  are 
very  important  in  this  group.  So  far  as  certain  labor  is  conven- 
tionally held  in  contempt,  and  the  laborer  realizes  it,  the  work  is 
made  disagreeable  to  him  by  frequent  arousal  of  the  unpleasant 
reactions  of  shame.  College  boys  doing  menial  work  have  curious 
reversals  of  feeling  in  this  respect;  some  people  honor  them  for  it, 
and  others  snub  them,  so  that  doing  the  same  work,  the  boys' 
emotions  vary  according  to  who  sees  them  doing  it.  This  source  of 
irksomeness  was  the  point  of  Veblen's  earlier  article  on  "The  In- 
stinct of  Workmanship  and  the  Irksomeness  of  Labor."  He 
pointed  out  that  great  physical  privations  are  gaily  imdergone  in 
war  and  sport,  because  these  occupations  are  held  in  esteem ;  and 
consequently  it  is  hardly  the  fatigue  but  rather  the  contumely  of 
ordinary  work  which  make  it  repulsive.  That  is  an  extreme  posi- 
tion, but  it  contains  the  truth  that  conventional  ideas  concerning 
the  dignity  or  indignity  of  labor  count  for  much  in  making  it  at- 
tractive or  the  reverse.  The  situation  has  been  aggravated  by 
tyrannical  masters  and  petty  of&cials,  who  treat  all  common 
laborers  as  if  they  are  necessarily  destitute  of  self-respect,  pride 
and  hope  of  advancement,^  and  by  the  frequent  loss  of  identity  of 
each  man's  work,  which  removes  from  him  another  possible  source 
of  gaining  esteem. 

'  Unproductive  Surplus  '  in  Wages 

Once  more  we  find  the  consideration  of  producers'  motives  lead- 
ing us  to  the  doctrine  of  rent.  The  rent  element  in  wages  is  closely 
comparable  to  that  in  interest ;  if  all  wages  were  cut  off  from  their 
recipients,  obviously  a  good  part  of  the  work  would  stop,  never- 
theless many  individuals  are  able  to  get  extra  large  payments  for 
their  personal  services,  on  account  of  keen  competition  among 
buyers.  If  these  individuals  were  unable  to  get  more  than  a 
considerably  less  amount,  they  would  still  render  just  the  same 
services.  Your  industrial  managers,  and  other  much-wanted  in- 
dividuals, who  get  $25,000  or  $100,000  or  more  a  year,  might,  it  is 
thought,  by  skillful  means  be  trimmed  down  to  some  average  sub- 
sistence like  $2500,  and  they  would  still  have  as  much  as  is  good 

^  Cf.  Slichter,  op.  cit.,  pp.  192-193. 


292  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

for  them,  whilst  the  rest  of  us  could  be  rescued  from  our  poverty 
by  redistribution  of  this  *  surplus.'  It  is  not  denied  that  the  serv- 
ices of  such  gifted  people  are  often  '  worth  '  what  they  are  paid, 
if  we  had  to  choose  between  having  them  and  not  having  them; 
but  this  one-sided  standard,  if  the  only  one  applied,  would  justify 
every  monopoly  price. 

Again,  we  have  the  radical  proposals  of  various  sorts  of  social- 
ism, which  could  guarantee  everyone  a  comfortable  subsistence 
and  would  allow  no  one  to  get  very  much  more,  and  besides  this 
there  are  various  less  heroic  proposals.  Progressive  taxation  of 
*  earned '  incomes,  for  example,  even  increasing  sharply  at  each 
step,  will  not  discourage  the  more  valuable  men's  industry, 
according  to  the  surplus  theory.  We  shall  not  discuss  any  of 
these  programs  in  detail,  but  shall  point  out  a  few  general  con- 
siderations springing  from  the  subject  of  motives. 

The  laissez-faire  economist  will  justify  the  arrangement  of 
allowing  each  man  to  get  all  he  can  for  his  services,  in  fair  open 
competition,  on  the  grounds  that: 

1 .  Because  of  the  expansibiUty  of  each  man's  wants  for  wealth, 
payment  according  to  results  is  the  most  reUable  way  of  getting 
each  to  do  his  utmost  work.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  the  wealth  he  is 
to  receive  is  a  fixed  quantity  regardless  of  what  he  does  (which  is 
now  the  condition  of  very  few  men's  employment,  notwithstand- 
ing the  socialist  writers'  analogies  drawn  from  army,  scientific  or 
governmental  posts),  his  pubhc  spirit  and  his  desire  for  acclaim 
will  be  a  much  less  certain  stimulus  to  production,  especially 
since  necessarily  all  cannot  be  given  distinction.  With  production 
so  greatly  reduced,  equal  distribution  will  have  benefited  no  one. 

2.  In  accordance  with  the  general  theory  of  value,  high  wages 
in  any  occupation,  such  as  that  of  the  business  manager,  is  an  in- 
dication that  there  is  a  scarcity  of  people  able  to  do  that  kind  of 
work  relative  to  demands  for  it;  and  is  at  the  same  time  an  auto- 
matic inducement  to  the  rising  generation  and  to  others  who  have 
any  mobility,  to  get  into  that  occupation  and  relieve  the  scarcity, 
instead  of  crowding  still  further  an  already  abundant  supply  in 
other  occupations.  If  a  commimity  has  plenty  of  common  la- 
borers and  few  skilled  artisans,  and  if  it  insists  on  paying  all  alike, 


WORK  293 

both  as  to  wages  and  working  conditions  in  general,  there  is  little 
prospect  that  common  laborers  will  take  the  trouble  to  learn  the 
skilled  trades,  and  so  the  proportions  between  the  two  groups  will 
become  more  and  more  maladjusted.  There  is  a  constant  tend- 
ency, given  free  competition,  to  the  equalization  of  wages  as  well 
as  profits  between  occupations. 

3.  Within  each  occupation,  the  laissez-faire  economist  would 
now  say,  there  is  no  tendency  toward  equality  of  wages  between 
individuals,  because  some  men  are  naturally  better  workers  than 
others.  The  more  valuable  one  perhaps  gets  something  like  a 
rent,  but  the  peculiar  merit  of  free  competition  in  this  respect  is 
that  it  tends  to  put  each  man  where  he  is  most  needed,  that  is, 
where  the  job  he  can  do  is  so  much  demanded  that  this  employer 
can  better  afford  to  hire  him  than  any  other  employer.  The  cities 
which  have  the  most  baseball  or  moving  picture  or  grand  opera 
enthusiasts,  for  example,  are  thus  assured  of  getting  the  best 
talent,  and  such  talent  is  accordingly  made  the  most  of. 

Now  there  are  plenty  of  objections  to  be  made  to  all  these  prop- 
ositions, into  the  mazes  of  which  we  cannot  just  now  go.  It  will 
be  said,  for  example,  that  this  talk  of  value  as  an  indicator  of  the 
greatest  demand  refers  only  to  greatest  purchasing  power,  and 
that  an  unjustifiable  part  of  the  world's  productive  energy  is  now 
drawn  into  the  production  of  folderols  for  the  rich  oligarchy 
Again,  one  may  contend  that  while  competition  has  some  tend- 
ency to  put  men  where  they  are  most  needed,  it  cannot  perform 
this  function  as  quickly  and  smoothly  and  democratically  as 
some  organized  public  authority  can  (state,  syndicate,  guild  or 
what  not).  If  we  do  guarantee  everyone  an  equal  emolument, 
this  reply  goes  on,  we  shall  not  leave  them  all  to  shift  for  them- 
selves; we  shall  train  each  at  pubHc  expense  for  the  job  for  which 
he  is  best  fitted,  and  we  shall  then  distribute  all  where  they  are 
most  needed  by  the  community  as  a  whole,  not  according  to  the 
bids  of  the  money  bags. 

Judgment  on  the  merits  of  this  dispute  depends  on  a  great 
many  factors  which  have  to  do  with  the  efficiency  of  any  public 
service,  especially  a  public  service  swelled  to  direct  all  large-scale 
economic  operations  as  well  as  the  numerous  other  functions  of 


294  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

government.  The  matter  is  so  complex  that  our  knowledge  of  mo- 
tives will  take  us  but  a  little  way.  We  have  seen  that  human 
nature  in  general  is  plastic  and  teachable;  in  this  circumstance 
lies  hope  both  for  socialists  and  individualists.  Both  must  rely  for 
amelioration  on  an  increase  of  knowledge  and  of  correspondingly 
wise  social  control.  The  public  service  will  presumably  become 
capable  of  better  things  progressively  as  the  citizens  become 
educated  in  democracy,  but  this  same  education  may  be  expected 
to  make  private  business  more  democratic,  with  the  road  to  talent 
more  open  than  ever  before. 

The  Hope  in  Emulation 

The  pivotal  question,  however,  is  whether  people  in  the  mass 
can  be  trained  to  labor  for  the  common  good  anywhere  nearly  as 
assiduously  as  they  have  always  labored  for  their  own  interest 
and  that  of  their  immediate  circle.  Past  experience  in  many  ways 
tends  to  validate  Taussig's  opinion  that,  although  there  are 
always  a  goodly  number  of  people  who  are  innately  capable  of 
such  large  devotion,  the  masses  probably  could  not  ever  be  edu- 
cated up  to  it.  Socialistic  and  cooperative  reformers  generally 
may  be  assigned  to  the  first  and  smaller  group ;  and  it  is  suspected 
that  the  exuberance  of  their  own  public  zeal  leads  them  to  hope 
impossible  transformations  of  motives,  by  education,  in  the  rank 
and  file.  One  may  easily  overdo  this  line  of  argument,  for  we 
know  that  even  the  poor  thing  we  have  to  ofTer  as  education  to- 
day, no  matter  to  whom  it  is  applied,  pretty  generally  has  the 
effect  of  giving  its  object  wider  and  less  selfish  interests. 

Yet  the  facts  of  heredity  in  general  and  of  innate  mental  varia- 
bility, as  shown  by  accumulating  tests,  make  the  hypothesis 
plausible  that  some  individuals  may  always  be  expected  to  have 
pugnacious  or  predatory  impulses  stronger  in  proportion  to  the 
other  elements  in  their  nature  than  is  the  case  with  other  individ- 
uals of  their  generation.  It  would  be  foolish  to  expect  to  train  all 
men  into  poets  or  contortionists,  —  though  much  could  be  accom- 
plished in  these  directions;  and  it  may  be  equally  futile  to  hope  to 
instill  into  all  the  virtuous  will  which  makes  one  love  his  neighbor 
as  himself.    The  great  strength  of  the  system  of  competition, 


WORK  295 

from  the  standpoint  of  production,  is  that  it  does  not  depend  upon 
all  people  wanting  the  same  things,  such  as  the  public  welfare  or 
the  honor  of  being  considered  a  good  citizen,  or  workmanship  for 
its  own  sake,  or  exemption  from  punishment,  but  it  appeals  to 
each  through  whatever  wants  will  move  him.  You  do  not  have  to 
depend  upon  Smith  the  baker  being  a  kindly  man  or  an  incor- 
ruptible ofl&cial,  nor  even  to  concern  yourself  about  what  sort  of 
thing  he  does  want.  You  give  him  money  and  get  your  bread, 
and  proceed  similarly  with  Jones  the  butcher,  and  then  they  make 
themselves  happy  each  in  his  own  way.  The  desire  for  wealth, 
therefore,  is  admirably  adapted  to  appealing  effectively  to  all  men 
if  their  interests  are  bound  to  be  diverse. 

There  are  two  master  motives  in  human  nature,  however, 
which  all  states  have  played  upon  to  develop  whatever  good  cit- 
izenship they  can  boast  of,  and  these  may  conceivably  be  en- 
gineered further  toward  some  such  goal  as  the  socialists  propose. 
We  mean  the  desire  for  social  approval  and  the  dread  of  pain  or 
confinement.  Social  control,  as  we  have  insisted  several  times, 
rests  principally  upon  these  foundations,  in  that  laws  and  cus- 
toms so  far  as  they  are  generally  observed,  are  observed  by  the 
many  because  it  is  honorable  and  decent  (i.  e.,  respectable,  praise- 
worthy) to  be  law-abiding,  and  by  the  few  because  physical  pun- 
ishment is  the  penalty  for  infraction.  Writers  frequently  point 
out  that  the  only  communist  societies  which  have  achieved  a 
measure  of  success  are  those  bound  by  strong  religious  ties,  such 
as  the  Shakers.  In  our  view  such  religious  sanctions  are  blends 
of  original  love  of  approval  and  fear,  as  is  good  citizenship  in 
general. 

But  to  raise  permanently  the  standards  of  honor  or  citizenship 
to  which  everyone  can  be  expected  to  conform,  with  the  necessity 
of  punishing  only  a  small  proportion,  is  a  slow  and  uncertain  mat- 
ter, for  customs  which  are  more  honored  in  the  breach  than  in  the 
observance  are  worse  than  none  at  all.  The  Russian  experiment  in 
communism  appears  now  (1920)  to  be  breaking  down  and  losing 
the  sympathy  of  labor  leaders  in  other  parts  of  the  world,  just  be- 
cause it  was  not  able  over  night  to  instill  devotion  to  the  common 
good  into  the  common  workers,  and  hence  had  to  resort  to  whole- 


296  ECONOMIC  MOTIVES 

sale  military  compulsion.  Slavery  called  by  any  other  name  tastes 
as  bitter  to  all  of  us. 

Out  of  the  mass  of  conflicting  testimony  from  that  unhappy 
country  let  us  take  one  straw  to  indicate  the  wind.  On  Easter 
1920  the  official  Soviet  paper  was  filled  with  articles  by  Lenin  and 
other  leaders, 

all  devoted  to  the  question  of  labour  in  the  Socialist  State  and  the  need  in 
the  present  crisis  for  self-devotion  to  labour  of  citizens  conscious  of  the 
country's  crisis,  and  for  compulsion  for  slackers;  all  explaining  the  differ- 
ence between  compulsion  and  disciplined  labour  in  the  capitalist  State  and 
the  same  in  the  Socialist  State  by  saying  that  in  one  men  were  working  for 
employers,  and  in  the  latter  each  man  was  working  for  the  good  of  all,  in- 
cluding himseU.i 

Even  assuming  that  the  governmental  machinery  were  run  in  a 
perfectly  disinterested  manner  for  the  whole  society,  it  seems  vain 
to  us  to  expect  to  move  masses  of  people,  accustomed  to  individ- 
ualism, by  this  perfect  but  cold  logic  of  altruism.  It  is  no  use 
either  to  hope  for  the  virtuous  will  from  mere  enlightenment; 
because  there  are  too  many  real  conflicts  between  the  individual's 
natural  vital  interests  and  the  interests  of  his  society,  —  too  many 
occasions  when  for  the  public  weal,  if  he  is  a  good  citizen,  he  must 
want  to  sacrifice  himself,  even  to  the  death.  The  egoist  will  be 
made  only  more  cunning  by  a  larger  knowledge  of  the  laws  of 
nature. 

But  there  are  seeds  of  devotion  in  human  nature,  whether  they 
be  ultimately  instinctive  desires  for  social  approval  or  parental 
instincts  or  what  not,  which  by  long  and  careful  watering  are 
capable  of  developing  the  flower  of  the  will  to  self-sacrifice.  This 
will  we  now  see  on  a  grand  scale  in  the  nobility  of  armies,  but  it  is 
revealed  on  only  a  less  grand  scale  in  the  ordinary  honesty,  truth- 
fulness, and  kindly  helpfulness  of  common  life.  Such  plants  of 
honor  and  compassion,  we  believe,  may  be  continually  nurtured 
to  higher  levels,  improving  the  provision  for  all  interests,  what- 
ever may  be  the  ultimate  limits  of  their  growth. 

1  Moscow  correspondence,  Manchester  Guardian  Weekly,  April  23,  1920. 


INDEX 


INDEX 


Abbot,  E.  S.,  86  n. 

Accumulation,  see  Saving. 

Acquisitiveness,  123. 

Action  system,  88. 

Acts,  in  relation  to  value,  239. 

Adaptation,  152,  153. 

Adrenalin,  135. 

Advertising,  225. 

Affections,  see  Passions  of  human  nature. 

Altruism,  201.    See  Egoism,  Self-interest. 

Ambiguity,  168,  169. 

Animal  psychology,  85. 

Antagonism  and  reinforcement,  154. 

Appetites,  104  f.,  113,  129. 

Applications  of  psychology  to  economics, 

205  f  • 

Aptitudes  (native  capacities),  loi,  102, 
127  f. 

Aristotle,  27  f.,  224,  257. 

Artificial  and  natural  elements  in  wants, 
223. 

Association  of  ideas:  laws  of,  according 
to  Aristotle,  28,  Hobbes,  37,  James 
Mill,  67  f.;  unconscious  links  in,  69, 
78,  116,  120,  121,  146,  147;  connec- 
tion with  habit  formation,  145  f.;  in 
reasoning,  170,  171;  in  acquiring  new 
interests,  199,  213  f.;  in  relation  to 
motives  in  work,  279-281. 

Associationist  hedonism,  26  f . ,  43  f . ,  67  f . ; 
reconciliation  with  modern  functional- 
ism,  189  f . 

Aufgabe,  177  f. 

Automatic  saving,  260  f. 

Avarice  ,212.    See  Passions . 

Averages  of  large  numbers,  see  Statistical 
methods. 

Bagehot,  Walter,  10. 

Bain,  Alexander,  67  f.,  94. 

'Baulking'  (Wallas),  129. 

Behavior   situation    (Holt) ,   87  f . ;    and 

utility,  229-232;   behaviorist  sciences, 

psychology  and  economics,   14,   208; 

behaviorist  movement  in  psychology, 

83  f. 


Ben tham,  Jeremy,  54 f.,  274. 

Bloomfield,  M.,  289  n. 

Bohm-Bawerk,  E.,  208,  209,  230,  255- 

257- 
Biicher,  K.,  213,  260,  270,  271,  289. 
Business  Psychology,  10. 

Calculations    of    utility,    see    Felicific 

calculus.  Valuation. 
Cannon,  W.  B.,  133-135,  286. 
Capital,  accumulation  of,  see  Saving; 

social  advantage  of,  254. 
Carver,  T.  N.,  200,  249-252,  261. 
Cause,  psychological  and  physical,  4n., 

83- 
'Censor,'  184. 
Character,  16. 

Chase,  H.  W.,  86  n.,  135,  136. 
Choice,  230. 
Clark,  J.  B.,  8. 
Clark,  J.  M.,  129  n.,  227. 
Clark,  V.  S.,  264. 
Collectional  economy,  271. 
Comparison  of  pleasures  and  pains,  see 

Felicific  calculus. 
Competition,    294,    295;     psychological 

roots  of,  249  f. 
Compulsion,  290,  295,  296. 
Conditioned    reflex,    147  f.,    211;     and 

pleasure-pain,  155;   in  valuation,  240, 

241.    iSee  Habits  and  habit  formation. 
Conflict  of  motives,  182  f.;    among  hu- 
man beings,  250-253. 
Conscience,  198. 
Consciousness, relation  to  behavior, 89  f.; 

emotional,  pleasant  and  unpleasant, 

132  f. 
Consumer's  surplus,  psychological  basis 

of,  243  f. 
Consumption,  208;  causes  and  results  of, 

4- 
Contiguity,  see  Association  of  ideas. 
Contrivance,   116,   127,   283,   284.     See 

Workmanship. 
Control  of  wants,  225  f. 
Conventions,  see  Custom. 


zgg 


300 


INDEX 


Cooley,  C.  H.,  202  n.,  217. 
Cost,  psychological  background  of,  2 29  f . ; 
ultimate,    235  f.;     opportunity,    236, 

237- 

Creative  impulse,  276  f.  See  Workman- 
ship. 

Crises  in  custom,  217. 

Culture,  221. 

Curiosity,  116;  in  fashion,  219,  278,  280, 
284. 

Custom,  202,  216  f.;  role  in  valuation, 
246;  and  work,  271,  272,  291  f.,  295, 
296. 

Darwin,  Charles,  102. 

Davenport,  H.  J.,  236. 

Defense  instincts,  114. 

Demand,  239;  curves  of  in  relation  to 
utility  curves,  241  f.;  inertia  of,  243. 

Desire,  71;  for  wealth,  212. 

'Determining  tendency',  177  f. 

Dewey,  John,  170,  258. 

Dibblee,  G.  B.,  241,  245. 

Diminishing  productivity,  8;  and  dimin- 
ishing utility,  242,  249.  See  Produc- 
tivity. 

Diminishing  utility,  see  Utility. 

'Dispositions'  (Wallas),  98  n. 

Distinction,  desire  for,  49  f.  See  Emula- 
tion. 

Distribution,  psychological  problems  in, 
7. 

'Disturbing '  motives,  10. 

Disutility,  229,  235  f. 

Division  of  labor,  Adam  Smith  on,  5; 
effect  on  workers,  5,  6. 

'Drives,'  134  f.;  in  habit  formation, 
150 f.;  in  reasoning  situation,  177  f.; 
instincts  versus  habits,  188  f.  See 
Motives. 

Dunlap,  Knight,  91  n.,  139. 

Economic  determinism,  11;    laws,  205, 

206;  man,  246. 
Educability  of  motives,  62  f.;  limits  of, 

69,  78  f.,  200  f.,  29s,  296.    See  mora] 

education. 
Egoism,  36,  43  f.,  56,  201,  212,  213,  250, 

251,  280,  282,  296. 
Emotions,  in  common-sense  analysis,  22; 

general  theory  on,  131  f.;   drives  to 

establish  habits,  197  f. 
Emulation,  49  f.,  118  f.,  215  f.,  252,  278, 

279, 282, 294-296. 


Entrepreneurs,  284-285. 

Epistemological  controversies,  41. 

Esthetic  wants,  223,  224,  270, 

Evaluation  of  pleasures  and  pains,  see 
Felicific  calculus. 

Evolution  of  wants,  208  f. 

Evolutionary  scale  of  innate  responses, 
102  f. 

Exchange,  112  f.;  development  of  peace- 
able, 250-252. 

Fallacy  of  different  planes,  192. 

Fashion,  216  f. 

Fatigue,  286,  287. 

Fear,  281;  instinctive,  114-115. 

Feeling,  Bentham  on,  55  f.  See  Pleas- 
ure and  pain. 

Felicific  Calculus,  193,  194,  232;  accord- 
ing to  Bentham,  59  f.;  the  mills,  76. 

Fetter,  F.  A.,  19  n.,  208,  238,  275. 

Fisher,  Irving,  208,  229,  230,  238,  257, 
262,  277. 

Fite,  W.,  139,  251. 

Food  getting  instincts,  1 14. 

Foundations  of  economics,  mental  and 
physical,  3  f . 

Franklin,  Benjamin,  254. 

Freud,  S.,  183,  185. 

Freudian  psychology,  86,  129,  130,  160, 
162, 176, 183  f.;  evaluation  of,  185  f. 

'General  innate  tendencies,'  127  f. 
Greatest  happiness  principle,  see  Hedon- 
ism. 
Green,  D.  I.,  236. 
Gregarious  instincts,  118. 
Grotius,  H.,  34  f. 

Habits  and  habit  formation:  in  common- 
sense  analysis,  22;  associationists  on, 
77  f.;  connection  with  association  of 
ideas,  145  f.;  principles  of  (learning), 
147  f.;  basis  of  reasoning,  167  f.;  in 
custom,  217;  in  utility,  230;  in  rela- 
tion to  value,  239;  in  relation  to  work 
motives,  279-281.  See  Conditioned 
reflex. 

Hart,  B.,  176  n.,  183  n. 

Hartley,  Thomas,  78  n. 

Hecht,  Selig,  153  n.,  233. 

Hedonic  Calculus,  see  Felicific  calculus. 

Hedonism,  ethical,  54-57. 

Hedonism,  psychological,  early  connec- 
tion  with  economics,    11;    apparent 


INDEX 


301 


exceptions  to,  11  f.;  a  spontaneous 
explanation,  20  f.;  circular  reasoning 
in,  20,  21;  and  association  psychology, 
21;  of  Aristotle,  27  f.;  Hobbes,  37  f.; 
Adam  Smith,  52  f.;  Bentham,  54  f.; 
James  Mill,  70  f.;  qualified  acceptance 
of,  189  f.;  premises  broadly  true,  205, 
206.   5ec  Associationist  hedonism. 

Herrick,  C.  Judson,  90,  133,  138  n.,  141, 
142,  148, 149, 157,  191 n. 

Hobbes,  Thomas,  36  f. 

Hobhouse,  L.  T.,  103  n.,  155  f. 

Hobson,  J.  A.,  209,  261,  265,  273  n., 
277. 

Hocking,  W.  E.,  24  n.,  113. 

Holmes,  S.  J.,  103  n.,  139  n.,  155. 

Holt,  E.  B.,  14  n.,  84  n.,  85,  87,  90,  104, 
106,  179,  181,  183,  184. 

Human  nature,  in  economics,  3  £.;  in 
conflict  with  pecuniary  efliciency,  12. 

Hume,  David,  41  n.,  93,  275. 

Ideas,  83;  in  lower  animals,  164  f.  See 
Association. 

Illusions,  200. 

'Impatience'  (Fisher),  257. 

Implicit  surpluses,  245. 

Impulsiveness,  a  factor  in  valuation,  248; 
in  saving,  269. 

Incentives  to  labor,  12. 

Income,  psychic,  237,  238;  streams  of, 
262;  earned  and  unearned,  255,  256. 

Indignity,  290,  291. 

Individual  differences,  210,  217,  246, 
247,  284,  294;   in  mental  traits,  201. 

Inertia  of  large  numbers,  206. 

Infinitesimal  increments,  242,  243. 

Inheritance,  266,  267. 

Inner  reflexes,  113. 

Instincts,  in  common-sense  analysis,  22; 
Grotius  on  social,  35;  according  to 
Adam  Smith,  43  f.;  James  Mill,  75; 
general  theory  on,  92  f.;  defined,  95; 
references  to  literature  on,  97  n.; 
inventory  of  human,  109  f.;  other 
alleged,  121  f.;  importance  of  distin- 
guishing from  intelligence,  130;  rela- 
tion to  emotions,  131  f.;  are  they 
prime  movers?  188  f.;  leave  marks  on 
adult  wants,  197;   'creative,'  276  f. 

Institution,  212;  of  interest,  256  f. 

Integration  of  responses,  179  f. 

IntelJectualism,  181,  205.  See  Ration- 
ality. 


Intelligence,  163;  and  valuation,  253; 
in  relation  to  work,  272.    See  Learning. 

Interaction,  83. 

Interest,  psychological,  196,  199.  See 
Instincts,  Pleasure  and  pain;  on 
capital,  see  Saving. 

Interpretation  of  dreams,  183  f. 

Introspection,  83,  84. 

Invention,  283,  284;  need  of  under- 
standing, 5;  and  capital,  256. 

Irksomeness  of  labor,  286  f. 

Issues  depending  on  instincts,  23  f. 


James,  William,  83  n.,  84  n., 

131  f.,  161,  183,  199,  277. 
James-Lange  theory,  131  f. 
Jevons,  W.  S.,  208,  243,  274. 


),  98,  99, 


Kelley,  F.  C,  12  n. 

Knowledge,  in  relation  to  wants,  211, 
227;  in  relation  to  valuation,  246, 
247;  in  relation  to  saving,  258-260. 

Labor,  see  Work;  turnover,  287,  288. 

Language  habits,  174,  175. 

Learning,  general  theory  on,  144  f.;  ele- 
ments in,  144,  145;  connection  with 
reasoning  and  rationality,  163  f.;  ap- 
plied to  economic  wants,  210  f.;  and 
valuation,  247;  and  providence,  257- 
258. 

Leisure  class,  267,  268. 

Lenine,  N.,  296. 

Libido,  184. 

Lillie,  R.  S.,  175  n.,  178  n. 

Link,  H.  C,  287,  289  n. 

Locomotion  instinct,  114. 

Loeb,  Jacques,  97,  101-103,  277. 

Loyalty,  282. 

McDougall,  William,  17,  18,  31  n.,  84  n., 
loS,  109  f.,  131  f.,  137,  159,  160,  188, 
282. 

Malthusian  law,  9. 

Manchester  Guardian,  296. 

Manipulation,  116. 

Marot,  H.,  277. 

Marshall,  H.  R.,  139,  194,  224,  260. 

Means  and  end,  213-215.    See  Associa- 
tion. 

Mechanistic  hypothesis  in  psychology, 
83f. 

Memory,  Hobbes  on,  37.  See  Association. 

Meyer,  Max,  138  n. 


302 


INDEX 


Mill,  James,  56  n.,  94,  138  n. 

Mill,  John  Stuart,  10,  16,  94,  255,  273, 
274. 

Mitchell,  Wesley  C,  55  n.,  59  n. 

Monotony,  287,  288. 

Moral  will,  192  f. 

Moralists  a  source,  17. 

Morals  and  moral  education,  198  f., 
218,226-228;  Benthamon,  56,  57,  62- 
66.   See  Perfectibility. 

Mores,  119,  218.    See  Custom. 

Morgan,  J.  J.  B.,  see  Watson,  J.  B. 

Motive,  psychological  concept  of,  14. 

Motives,  common-sense  analysis  of,  16  f.; 
sources  of  material  on,  16  f.;  which 
are  economic,  19;  fundamental  fac- 
tors in,  19  f .;  relation  to  all  psychology, 
25;  definition  and  catalog  by  James 
Mill,  71;  emotional  and  affective 
drives  in,  134  f.,  development  of,  188, 
189;  instilling  of  new,  196  f.;  two 
methods  of  training,  198,  199;  in 
work,  270  f.;  non-financial,  274  f.; 
Wagner's  list,  275. 

Multiple  reactions,  151. 

Muscular  coordinations,  113. 

Music,  287,  289,  290. 

Needs,  216,  251,  252. 

Nervous  system  as  common  denomina- 
tor, 98. 

Newer  point  of  view  in  psychology,  83  f . 

Non-financial  motives,  274  f. 

Novelty,  116;  in  fashion,  219.  5ee  Curi- 
osity. 

Objective  psychology,  see  subjective  and 

objective  aspects. 
Oppenheimer,  F.,  253. 
Opportunity  cost,  see  Cost. 
Owen,  Robert,  281. 

Pain,  see  Pleasure  and  pain. 

Parental  affection,  analyzed  by  Mill  and 

Bain,  72,  73;  instinctive  elements,  117. 
Parker,  Carleton,  129  n.,  277. 
'Passions'  of  human  nature  (or  'of  the 

soul')  16,  30  f-,  32,  37,  39,40,43)  44  f- 
Patriotism,  12,  282. 
Patten,  S.  N.,  26  n. 
Pavlov,  148. 

Payment  by  results,  272,  273,  292,  293. 
Perfectibility,   200  f.,    276.     See  Moral 

education. 


Perry,  R.  B.,  178,  181. 

Persistence,  104  f.,  149,  150. 

Personality,  182  f. 

Persuasion,  225,  227. 

Peterson,  J.,  153  n.,  167  n. 

Physiological  correlates  of  pain  and  pleas- 
ure, 38  f. 

Physiological  emphasis  in  psychology, 
83  f. 

Pillsbury,  W.  B.,  170,  172,  177. 

Plasticity  of  human  nature,  211,  222, 
223. 

Plato,  199. 

Play,  121  f.,270,  278,  280. 

Pleasure  and  Pain,  286;  in  common-sense 
analysis  of  motives,  20  f.;  Aristotle's 
theory,  28;  Bentham  on,  55  f.,  136  f., 
influence  in  learning,  154  f.;  in  Freu- 
dian psychology,  184;  general  role  in 
motives,  136,  189  f.,  235-238;  and 
utility,  230;  Weber-Fechner  law,  233- 
234;  in  valuation,  240;  in  economics, 
245;  in  relation  to  work,  271,  272,  275, 
281,  282. 

Political  theory  a  source,  17. 

Population,  9. 

Positive  and  negative  reactions,  121, 
140  f .   See  Pleasure  and  pain. 

Practical  uses  of  knowledge  of  motives, 
5, 9  f.,  23,24. 

Praiseworthiness,  desire  for,  282,  283. 

Premises  of  economics,  whether  psychol- 
ogy is  necessary  for,  13. 

Prepotent  responses,  223. 

Present  state  of  economic  psychology, 
205  f . _ 

Production,  mental  and  physical  aspects 
of,  4  f- 

Productivity  of  capital,  255  f.,  261.  See 
Diminishing  productivity. 

Professional  service,  273. 

Profits,  285;  increasing  through  knowl- 
edge of  human  nature,  12;  in  relation 
to  interest,  264. 

Propaganda  for  saving,  269. 

Propensity,  see  Instincts. 

Proportionality,  principle  of,  8;  relation 
to  all  values,  8,  9.    See  Productivity. 

Propriety  (Adam  Smith) ,  25  f . 

Providence,  evolution  of,  see  Thrift. 

Psychological  parallelism,  84  f . 

Psychological    schools    of    economics, 
208. 

Public  service,  273,  293,  294. 


INDEX 


303 


Pugnacity,  see  Rage. 
Purpose,  177  f. 

Rage,  115,  281,  290. 

Rationality,  77,  80,  205,  246  f.;  extent 
of,  in  human  beings,  62  f.;  connections 
with  learning,  163  f. 

Rationalization,  59,  176,  186,  187. 

Reason  and  reasoning,  22,  47;  learning 
process  believed  to  explain,  163  f.; 
psychological  process  distinguished 
from  logic,  167,  168;  elements  in  proc- 
ess, 168  f.;  alleged  opposition  to  in- 
stinct, 192  f.;  and  valuation,  239,  240. 

Recession  of  stimulus,  104,  179  f. 

Reflex  circuit  (or  arc),  87  f. 

Relations  of  psychology  and  economics, 

Religious  motives,  198. 

Rents  in  interest,  wages,  and  profits,  7. 

See  Saver's  rent,  Work. 
Repression,  129, 182  f. 
Response,  similarity  to  want,  14. 
Rhythm,  121,  224,  289,  290. 
Ricardo,  Iron  law  of  wages,  9. 
Risk,  268,  285. 

Roche- Agussol,  M.,  208  n.,  237. 
Ross,  E.  A.,  200  n. 
Russell,  B.,  277. 
Russian  communism,  295,  296. 

Salesmanship,  psychology  in,  i,  2,  225, 
226. 

Sanctions,  65,  66. 

Satisfaction,  232. 

'Satisfiers' and  'annoyers,'  121,  138  n. 

Saver's  rent,  264,  265. 

Saving,  psychology  in,  254  f.;  marginal 
saver,  260  f.;  influence  of  technical 
methods  on,  254;  equilibrium  or  func- 
tional theory,  260  f.;  automatic,  260; 
reducing  cost  of,  264  f.;  by  public  au- 
thority, 260. 

Self,  120,  161,  183. 

Self-abasement  and  self-assertion,  118- 
120. 

Self-interest,  11;  Mill's  criticism  of  Ben- 
tham,  79,  201.    See  Egoism. 

Senior,  N.  W. ,  10. 

Sensation,  Hobbes  on,  37. 

Sensationalism,  89  f . 

'Sentiment'  (Shand),  160-162,  196  f. 

Sexual  instincts,  117. 

Shand,  A.  F.,  16,  160,  282. 


Shaw,  A.  W.,  228  n. 

Sherrington,  C.  S.,  133,  149,  154,  223. 

Sidgwick,  Henry,  31  n. 

Slichter,  S.  H.,  288,  291  n. 

Smith,  Adam,  43  f.,  215,  251,  255,  283. 

Social  approval  and  disapproval,  118. 

Social  art  dependent  on  social  science,  13. 

Social  control,  295.  See  Moral  educa- 
tion. 

Social  influences  in  motive  development, 
216-222. 

Social  psychology,  86,  87,  202,  216,  217. 

Socialism,  265  f.,  276,  292  f.;  a  question 
of  motives,  9. 

Sombart,  W.,  254. 

Sources  on  motives,  16  f. 

Spencer,  Herbert,  98,  288  n. 

Springs  of  action,  17,  57,  58.  See  Mo- 
tives. 

Standard  of  living,  a  psychological  factor 
in  wages,  9. 

Static  and  d3Tiamic,  224  f. 

Statistical  methods  applied  to  motives, 
205,  206,  249,  264. 

Stiles,  P.  G.,  286. 

Stout,  G.  F.,  84  n.,  132. 

Stuart,  H.  W.,  258. 

Subconscious,  184  f. 

Subjective  and  objective  aspects,  of  mo- 
tives, 83  f.;  of  wants,  217-218;  of 
utility,  229  f.;  of  income,  237,  238;  of 
valuation,  239  f. 

Sublimation,  129,  185. 

Substitution,  243. 

Suppression,  see  Repression. 

S3mipathy,  Adam  Smith  on,  54  f.,  122. 

Tarde,  G.,  283. 

Tastes,  210. 

Taussig,  F.  W.,  9,  215,  241,  263,  277, 
283,  294. 

Taxation,  265,  292. 

Test  of  solution  in  reasoning,  172  f. 

Theory  of  moral  sentiments,  44  f . 

Thorndike,  E.  L.,  91  n.,  114  f.,  138  n., 
139,  155,  167  n.,  201  n. 

Thought  as  implicit  behavior,  90. 

Thrift,  development  of,  254  f.;  possi- 
bility of  increasing,  267  f. 

Time  preference,  psychological  basis  of, 

257  f- 
Titchener,  E.  B.,  84  n.,  89,  138  n.,  139, 

174, 194  n.,  234. 
Tolman,  E.  C,  91  n. 


304 


INDEX 


Transfer,  210  f.;  of  interest  or  motive, 
186;  associationist  doctrine  on,  77  f.; 
behaviorist  account,  158  f. 

Trial  and  error  in  imagination,  164  f. 

Tropisms,  102, 103. 

Trotter,  W.,  118. 


Ubertragung,  160-162,  214. 

Unconscious  inference,  171,  221.  See 
Association. 

Unconscious  motives,  84,  184  f.,  187, 
208;  in  utility,  230,  231. 

Utilitarian  psychology,  of  Bentliam,54  f.; 
of  the  two  MUls  and  Bain,  67  f. 

Utility  196;  hedonistic  interpretation, 
11;  Adam  Smith  on,  44  f.;  in  explain- 
ing exchange,  213;  in  custom,  220  f.; 
psychological  background  of,  229  f.; 
measurement  of,  229-232;  diminish- 
ing, 232  f.;  and  demand,  239;  curves 
of  and  demand  curves,  241  f.;  margi- 
nal, 243,  244;  total,  244,  245;  calcula- 
tions of,  245  f.;  diminishing  in  relation 
to  sacrifice,  261. 

Valuation  process,  psychology  of,  239  f.; 

differences  in  accuracy  of  calculations, 

246  f.;  in  saving,  258  f. 
Value,  psychological  problems  in,   67; 

usages  of,   229;    non-economic,   250; 

in  relation  to  wages,   292,  293.     See 

Valuation  process. 
Variable   proportions,   see   Diminishing 

productivity. 
Veblen,  T.,  124 f.,  214,  215,  223,  225, 

246,  277,  279,  291. 
Visual  exploration,  116. 
Vocalization  instincts,  1 14.  ' 


Wages,  9.   5eeWork. 

Wagner,  Adolf,  9  n.,  275. 

Wallas,  Graham,  13  n.,  18  n.,  98  n., 
129  n.,  192  n. 

Want,  central  unit  both  of  psychology 
and  economics,  14;  subjective  and 
objective  sides,  207. 

Wantability,  229. 

Wants,  psychology  needed  to  explain,  3; 
primitive  soon  outgrown,  196  f.;  psy- 
chology of,  207  f.;  evolution  of,  208  f.; 
influence  on  production,  209;  redirec- 
tion of,  209;  insatiability  of,  215  f., 
292;  classification  of,  222  f.;  artificial 
and  natural  elements  in,  223;  con- 
scious control  of,  225  f.;  present  vs. 
future,  257  f.  See  Educability  of 
motives. 

Warren,H.  C.,i78n. 

Watson,  J.  B.,  85,  87  n.,  89,  90,  97  n., 
137  n.,  148,  151,  15s,  186,  248;  with 
J.  J.  B.  Morgan,  inf.,  115,  159, 
162  n.,  184,  197. 

Wealth,  desire  for,  212,  250-251;  as  mo- 
tive in  work,  270  f. 

Wealth  of  Nations,  43  f . 

Weber-Fechner  law,  233,  234. 

WeUs,  F.  L.,  162  n. 

Wicksteed,  P.  H.,  230,  237. 

Woodworth,  R.  S.,  14  n.,  84  n.,  85  n., 
107, 109  f.,  150, 154, 156, 167  n.,  178 n., 
188  f. 

Work,  11-13;  and  cost,  236,  237;  margi- 
nal unit  of,  and  rent  elements,  271, 
291  f.;    laissez-faire  position  on,  292, 

293- 
Workmanship,  116,  123  f.,  224,  276  f. 

Yerkes,  R.  M. 


0^  - 


